A Bloomberg report shows that a group of 33 lawmakers in Japan are backing a 1,350 kilometer pipeline that would run between Russia's Sakhalin Island and Japan's Ibaraki prefecture, just northeast of Tokyo. The project is estimated to cost $5.9 billion and could yield as much as 20 billion cubic meters of natural gas per year (equivalent to 15 million metric tons of liquefied natural gas). The pipeline would make up 17 percent of Japan's imports.

The Japanese lawmakers backing the proposal belong mostly to the ruling Liberal Democratic Party and the New Komeito Party. The renewed interest in the pipeline is primarily due to Japan's own energy shortages following the shutdown of all of Japan's 48 nuclear reactors following the March 11, 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami, which caused a triple meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi plant. The Democratic Party of Japan government at the time decided to shut down Japan's nuclear plants and begin moving the country away from a reliance on nuclear power following a public backlash after the Fukushima crisis.