ScreenHunter_111 Feb. 22 18.42

It’s no wonder that nuclear energy has kind of been dominating the news about Japan ever since the March, 2011 earthquake and nuclear disaster.

As one of Japan’s proudest domestic resources, Japan has long been an advocate for nuclear energy. Even following the 3/11 disaster, many domestic factions still push for even more nuclear energy in a country that largely imports many of its resources.

But there’s at least one more resource that Japan is capable of producing energy domestically and, in fact, it’s been doing just that for a while.

Japan has historically imported the large majority of its oil from the Middle East, as most of the world’s economic superpowers are wont to do. That’s no surprise, and looking at Japan’s tiny landmass, you’d think it would be incapable of domestically producing its own oil.

Actually, though, Japan does produce its own oil – albeit at a minuscule .4% of its overall annual consumption – and they even do it with adorable bite-sized oil derricks, completely defying even Japanese people’s assumption that “black gold,” as the great sages The Beverly Hillbillies called it, just wasn’t available ’round these parts.

From the looks of it, a small oil field in Japan can produce about 100,000 barrels of oil a year, although, as these photos depict, there are also individual pumpjacks working lazily away outside of people’s homes in whatever residential areas happen to be sitting on a reservoir.

https://twitter.com/jetpack/status/561876730894221313

Some oil pumping businesses in Japan even inadvertently got themselves into the onsen hot spring bath business when their operations accidentally unearthed natural spring wells, which now operate for eager visitors wanting to know what its like to live the evil oil baron life of bathing in oil-scented baths.

Speaking of which, we’re happy to know that almost all oil operations are located remotely from each other, predominantly in more rural prefectures such as Niigata, lest we have a competitive situation like this crop up…

Source: Matome Naver