IEA tackles Iran war oil price spikes with record stocks release plan, markets not convinced

By America Hernandez and Alex Lawler

PARIS/LONDON, March 11 (Reuters) – The International Energy Agency on Wednesday agreed to release 400 million barrels of oil, the largest such move in its history, to try to rein in crude prices that have soared due to supply shocks from the U.S.-Israeli war ‌with Iran.

The IEA said the release had been backed unanimously by 32 member countries, the sixth such move it has made since its creation in ‌the 1970s. It is aimed at preventing a further rise in oil prices on fears that Iranian attacks will continue to block Middle East oil exports from reaching markets.

“The oil market challenges we are facing ​are unprecedented in scale, therefore I am very glad that IEA member countries have responded with an emergency collective action of unprecedented size,” said IEA Executive Director Fatih Birol.

The Paris-based IEA made its comments as French President Emmanuel Macron chaired a meeting of G7 leaders to discuss the issue.

The emergency stocks will be made available to the market over a timeframe that is appropriate to the national circumstances of each member country,” the IEA said, adding this would be “supplemented by additional emergency measures by some countries”.

U.S. President Donald Trump, who launched ‌attacks on Iran alongside Israel on February 28, was shown ⁠at the end of a video of the G7 meeting chaired by Macron saying: “I think we are having a tremendous impact on the world.”

Oil prices gained nearly 4% on Wednesday as further attacks on ships in the Strait of Hormuz worsened supply-disruption fears, and ⁠analysts said the release of reserves was inadequate to ease those concerns.

“I’m not surprised that the market is reacting like this given that the announcement was priced in,” said Gary Ross, CEO of Black Gold Investors and a veteran oil market analyst. “This situation is not manageable without some demand destruction and much higher prices, unless the conflict ends.”

Analysts have also said the pace of ​daily ​IEA stock releases would matter as much as, if not more than, the overall size.

If 100 million ​barrels were released over the next month, the daily pace will ‌amount to around 3.3 million barrels per day – a fraction of the current disruption of around 20 million barrels per day, with the Strait of Hormuz between Iran and Oman effectively blocked.

DOUBLE SCALE OF UKRAINE CRISIS RELEASE

In 2022, IEA member countries released 182.7 million barrels of oil and oil products in two stages, which was then the largest in IEA history, when Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

“Pressure came mainly from the U.S. government which wants this release,” an EU diplomat had said, speaking before the IEA statement.

In the G7 video, Trump said he agreed with the IEA decision.

U.S. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum had welcomed initial reports of the planned release of oil reserves, ‌while saying in an interview with Fox News that he did not believe the world was ​facing an energy shortage.

“We’ve got a transit problem, which is temporary,” he said. “You have a temporary transit ​problem that we’re resolving militarily and diplomatically, which we can resolve and will ​resolve.”

JAPAN TO MOVE SWIFTLY

G7 member Japan said it planned to release around 80 million barrels from its private and national oil reserves as ‌its contribution.

“Rather than wait for formal IEA approval of a coordinated ​international reserve release, Japan will act first ​to ease global energy market supply and demand, releasing reserves as early as the 16th of this month,” Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi said in a broadcast statement.

Western economies coordinate their strategic oil stockpiles through the IEA, which was formed in 1974 after the oil crisis.

IEA members hold emergency stockpiles of more than ​1.2 billion barrels, with another 600 million in industry stocks ‌held under government obligation.

(Reporting by Alex Lawler in London, America Hernandez in Paris, Pietro Lombardi in Madrid, Richard Valdmanis, Fabiola Arámburo in Mexico City; Jekaterina ​Golubkova, Kantaro Komiya and Makiko Yamazaki in Tokyo, Andreas Rinke, Matthias Williams and Ludwig Burger in Berlin; Heejin Kim and Jihoon Lee in Seoul. Writing ​by Keith WeirEditing by Himani Sarkar, Tom Hogue, Clarence Fernandez, Raju Gopalakrishnan, Philippa Fletcher)