PARIS: US allies agreed on Friday to tap their emergency oil reserves again in a bid to calm crude prices that have soared following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
The decision was made at an extraordinary ministerial meeting of the 31-nation International Energy Agency chaired by US Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm.
While the group said in a statement that it would only disclose the details “early next week”, US President Joe Biden said earlier that they agreed to release “tens of millions of additional barrels of oil onto the market”.
United States weighs largest ever draw from emergency oil reserve
The IEA members — which include the United States, European countries, Australia and Japan, among others — had already pledged last month to release 62.7 million barrels of oil.
The meeting came one day after US President Joe Biden announced a record release of US oil onto the market — one million barrels every day for six months, or a total of more than 180 million barrels.
The IEA move will mark just the fifth time it has tapped its stockpiles since 1991. Its members hold emergency stockpiles totalling 1.5 billion barrels.
The group repeated its warning that the prospect of large-scale disruptions to Russian oil production “is threatening to create a global oil supply shock”.
“The IEA Ministers reiterated their concerns about the energy security impacts of the egregious actions by Russia and voiced support for sanctions imposed by the international community in response,” the group’s statement said.
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