Amid boom in tourism, Japan is facing jet fuel shortage, as the country\u2019s plummeting oil refineries cannot provide adequate fuel to enable return trips for all planes.
\nAuthorities at Narita Airport near Tokyo, Japan’s main gateway for international arrivals, said in late June that six airlines had shelved plans to add 57 flights to the weekly schedule, according to the NHK News on Wednesday.
\nRegional airports are also experiencing difficulties. Every winter, New Chitose Airport near Sapporo in Hokkaido Prefecture attracts waves of skiers and snowboarders drawn by northern Japan’s renowned deep powder. However, this year, Qantas Airways and Singapore Airlines have cancelled their seasonal flights to the airport, citing an inability to secure enough fuel for the return journeys.
\nThe problem has multiple causes, Japanese Transport Minister Saito Tetsuo explained at a recent news conference. The primary issue is the significant reduction in the number of Japan’s oil refineries, which process imported crude oil into aviation fuel. Saito also noted that labour shortages in the trucking and shipping industries have exacerbated the challenges.
\nThe number of refineries in Japan peaked at 49 in 1983. Due to declining oil demand and recent government efforts to reduce fossil fuel reliance, this number has now dropped to 20.
\nThis reduction means there is not only less fuel available, but the fuel produced must also travel greater distances to reach its destination\u2014first by ships to the nearest port, and then by trucks.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Amid boom in tourism, Japan is facing jet fuel shortage, as the country\u2019s plummeting oil refineries cannot provide adequate fuel to enable return trips for all planes. Authorities at Narita Airport near Tokyo, Japan’s main gateway for international arrivals, said in late June that six airlines had shelved plans to add 57 flights to the …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":28099,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-28098","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-international","category-news-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28098","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28098"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28098\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28100,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28098\/revisions\/28100"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28099"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28098"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28098"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28098"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}