China, Japan, South Korea urged to buy more Russian oil

China, Japan and South Korea should buy more oil from Russia, the world’s second-biggest producer, to lower the price of West Asian crude, the chairman of Nippon Oil Corp said.

“If one million barrels per day of Russian oil are supplied to North-East Asia, it would raise the region’s self-sufficiency by about 7 per cent, eliminating the ‘Asian premium’,” Fumiaki Watari, chairman of Nippon Oil, Japan’s largest oil refiner, said through a translator at the 2005 North-East Asia Petroleum Forum in Seoul today.

Business Times