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Analysis: Japan weighs joining US coalition to protect Strait of Hormuz oil shipments

Japan will likely keep its options open for whether to join the US-led coalition to defend the Strait of Hormuz, through which around 80% of its crude supply flows, with refiners weighing various options to ensure stable supplies, industry experts and officials told S&P Global Platts.

The US is going forward with plans to build an international coalition to protect freedom of navigation through the Strait of Hormuz and the Bab el-Mandeb waterway offshore Yemen, and it will become clear within weeks which nations are willing to join the effort, General Joseph Dunford, chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, said Tuesday.

Acting US Defense Secretary Mark Esper first raised the idea in late June of a broader coalition to share the burden of protecting the key oil chokepoints. He suggested additional maritime and air surveillance and stronger naval protections such as a “picket line of ships” or military escorts of oil tankers.

Kotaro Nogami, deputy chief cabinet secretary, declined to comment on Dunford’s remarks at a press conference Wednesday but said Japan is in close communication with the US on the Iran situation, declining to elaborate further.

For Japan, deciding whether to join the US-led coalition will be politically sensitive as it involves various legal clearances to send the Self-Defense Forces, coupled with the looming July 21 upper house elections.
MIDDLE EAST OIL DEPENDENCY

Japan’s oil supply security came under the spotlight in the wake of the June 13 oil tanker attacks, when two vessels, including one operated by a Japanese shipping company, were attacked just outside of the Strait of Hormuz.

“The government sees the attack on a ship operated by our country’s shipping company near the Strait of Hormuz as a grave incident that threatens our country’s peace and prosperity,” Nogami said at a separate press conference Thursday. “We take it seriously and strongly condemn such attack, which endangers ships.”

“From this perspective, we intend to continue playing as great a role as possible in easing tensions in the Middle East by cooperating with the US and other relevant countries,” he added.

Japanese refiners Idemitsu Kosan and Cosmo Oil said Thursday they are considering various options including diversifying their crude supply sources, when asked whether they were looking to expand their imports from areas that do not have to transit the Strait of Hormuz.

“Our principle is to actively diversify [crude supply sources] based on economics, while maintaining a core Middle East crude oil [supply],” a spokesman for Japan’s largest refiner JXTG Nippon Oil & Energy said Thursday.

The Middle East accounted for 88.9% of Japan’s crude imports, or an average of 3.13 million b/d, over January-May, according to the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry data.

US President Donald Trump’s administration has asked the Japanese government to join its coalition to protect commercial shipments in areas including offshore Iran, the Nikkei newspaper reported Thursday, without citing sources.

“Probably the US is assuming that sending the Self-Defense Forces is the only option for Japan,” said Koichiro Tanaka, professor at Keio University and Japan’s leading expert on Iran. “It is difficult to imagine Trump would agree to any other option.”

But Tanaka added that Japan will be in a dilemma over keeping the balance of its relationships with the US as well as with Iran, where Tokyo has maintained good relations, in addition to domestic considerations.

Lawrence Brennan, who teaches maritime law at Fordham University and is a retired Navy captain who served in the Judge Advocate General’s Corps, said: “I would not be surprised to see a Japanese presence.”

“Japan is probably the dominant or leading party interested in transit through the Strait of Hormuz — they and the Chinese are most dependent on Middle East oil,” Brennan said.

Brennan added that Japan provided support to anti-piracy coalitions in the past, “but they didn’t provide as much active assistance as they were capable of doing,” given the limits of the Self-Defense Forces’ mission as required by the country’s constitution.

“I don’t think there’s going to be a constitutional change in the near future to have a military, but the reality is the Japanese [Maritime] Self-Defense Force looks and acts in many cases as if it were a military — and has a capacity that few militaries in the world have,” Brennan said.

Japan’s Maritime Self-Defense Force has been in operation in the Gulf of Aden offshore Somalia to protect vessels with Japanese interests since 2009 in the wake of piracy attacks.

Brennan said Japan’s base in Djibouti could supply Japanese logistics ships if it joins the security coalition in the Strait of Hormuz and the Bab al-Mandab.
Source: Platts

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