Japan Deepening Ties with Leading Oil Producer Saudi Arabia

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published Sep 9, 1:37PM EDT

Since Japan and Saudi Arabia established diplomatic relations in 1955, Japan has become one of the biggest importers of Saudi oil, with trade in 2010 exceeding $ 43 billion. Japanese direct investment in Saudi Arabia is now the third largest among nations’ foreign direct investment, a relationship that Japan’s ambassador to Saudi Arabia Shigeru Endo has characterized as “complimentarity,” the Saudi Gazette newspaper reported.

According to the U.S. government Energy Information Administration, Japan, with few domestic energy resources, is only 16 percent energy self-sufficient and is now the world’s third largest oil consumer in the world behind the United States and China and the globe’s third largest net importer of crude oil.

Endo said, “While the complementary relationship will remain unchanged into the future, room for expansion and diversification of the bilateral relations is now emerging. What we have to do is to find good seeds and plant them leaving the future generations to reap the harvest… Such relationship naturally goes beyond simple trade of energy and manufactured goods.”

Saudi Arabia remains Japan’s biggest oil supplier. According to Japan’s Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, in January Saudi Arabia supplied Japan with 34.28 million barrels, or 27.5 percent of Japan’s total imports 2011, with the United Arab Emirates providing 28.62 million barrels, or 23 percent of Japan’s crude imports, which means that more than half of Japan’s needs for crude oil came from Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates.

By. Charles Kennedy, Deputy Editor OilPrice.com

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.