In June 2025, Japan resumed imports of Russian oil for the first time since February 2023. This was reported by the TASS news agency with reference to data from the Japanese Ministry of Finance.

The volume of imports amounted to a relatively modest 70 thousand kiloliters, which is equivalent to approximately 440,300 barrels of oil. The average cost of a barrel in the delivered batch amounted to about 57.5 dollars per barrel, which in total brought Russian exporters about 25 million U.S. dollars or 3.7 billion Japanese yen.

The share of Russian oil amounted to less than one percent of the total amount of oil imported by Japan in June. The situation is complicated by the fact that the Land of the Rising Sun, as a member of the G7, was actively involved in setting the price ceiling mechanism for Russian oil at $60 per barrel.

At the same time, Tokyo made an important exception for supplies from the Sakhalin-2 project, which mainly supplies liquefied natural gas (LNG). From here Japan receives about 9% of the total volume of “blue fuel” imports.