Iran: IEA gives green light to release 400 million barrels of oil reserves

Brussels, 11 March (LaPresse) – The 32 member countries of the International Energy Agency (IEA) today unanimously agreed to make 400 million barrels of oil from their emergency reserves available to the market to address the disruption of oil markets resulting from the war in the Middle East. This was announced in a statement. The decision to take collective emergency action was taken, it is explained, following an extraordinary meeting of IEA member governments held yesterday, convened by IEA Executive Director Fatih Birol to assess market conditions in the context of the conflict in the Middle East and evaluate options for addressing supply disruptions. ‘The challenges we are facing in the oil market are unprecedented in scale, so I am very pleased that IEA member countries have responded with collective emergency action of unprecedented scale,’ Birol said. ‘Oil markets are global,’ he stressed, “so the response to major disruptions must also be global. Energy security is the founding mandate of the IEA, and I am pleased that IEA members are demonstrating strong solidarity in taking decisive action together.”