Japan and OAO Rosneft, Russia's biggest oil producer, signed an initial agreement to cooperate in crude oil exploration and production, part of Japan's efforts to win better access to overseas reserves.

The Agency for Natural Resources and Energy, under Japan's trade ministry, on Thursday agreed in Moscow to a nonlegally binding, cooperative framework with the Russian oil monopoly, the agency said in a statement Friday in Tokyo.

Japan, which imports about 90 percent of its oil from the Middle East, is increasing its reliance on Russian energy assets such as oil, gas and uranium enrichment to ensure supply.

The accord follows a similar agreement the trade ministry signed in 2005 with OAO Gazprom, the world's largest natural-gas producer.

"The reciprocal relations would provide Japan with wider access to Russia's upstream oil-development projects," Masato Sasaki, senior deputy director of the Japanese agency's petroleum division, told reporters in Tokyo. "Financing for oil projects in Russia may be one of the areas that Japan can provide support in."

The two will form a committee to decide details of the tieup in oil exploration and production, refining and development of technologies used for oil projects, the agency said. The proposed panel will hold at least one meeting every year.

Eastern Siberia and Sakhalin Island are two of the Russian oil fields that Japan is keen to tap into to reduce its reliance on Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates for oil.

Japan has lobbied for the construction of the pipeline to Perevoznaya on Russia's Pacific coast from eastern Siberia in a bid to boost imports of crude produced in the area.