 Complete the following phrase:  Part of Japans strategy to ensure oil supplies is to encourage investment in oil-supplying countries. However, such investment have never kept pace with Japans investments in other regions. The countrys expanding need for oil helped push direct investment in the Middle East to 9.3 percent of total direct investments abroad by Japanese companies in 1970, but this share had fallen to 6.2 percent by 1980 and to only 1.8 percent by 1988. The IranIraq War 198088 was a major factor in the declining interest of Japanese investors, exemplified by the fate of a large US3 billion petrochemical complex in Iran, which was almost complete when the 