Japanese businesses are normally quite secretive and they have largely been mum about their approach to Iranian oil.
Japan was Iran’s third largest customer last year. The country needs more oil as it is shutting down all its nuclear power plants. It is worried about lining up new suppliers and unwilling to cross Iran off its list entirely.
Still, it promised the United States to reduce its Iranian oil imports and won an exemption from US sanctions last month.
Japan averaged 341,000 barrels a day of Iranian oil in the first half of last year. In February, the latest month for which import figures are available, imports of Iranian oil were 306,000 barrels a day, down 10 percent.
The Japanese government has reportedly told its refiners to cut purchases from Iran by at least 15 percent this year. But the Japanese government has announced no numbers officially and the US government has refused to say anything about what Japan promised it.
Reuters said it was told of three firms that were buying no Iranian crude in April.
Reuters said Showa Shell Sekiyu, the nation’s largest buyer of Iranian crude was reducing but not eliminating buys from Iran. It said another big lifter, JX Nippon Oil & Energy Corp., was cutting its purchases by only about 10 percent from 90,000 barrels a day last year to 80,000 this year.