Heads of IEA, IMF, World Bank to meet next Monday to discuss energy crisis

PARIS: The leaders of the International Energy Agency, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank will discuss the energy crisis triggered by the Iran war next Monday, IEA executive director Fatih Birol said on Tuesday.

“This energy crisis calls for all hands on deck & international cooperation,” Birol said on social media platform X, stressing the need for the three institutions to support governments worldwide amid the economic fallout from the war.

Birol, the IMF’s chief Kristalina Georgieva and the World Bank’s Ajay Banga agreed last week to form a coordination group to help deal with the regional disruption that has caused one of the largest supply shortages in global energy market history.

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Their response mechanism could include targeted policy advice, assessing potential financing needs and providing support, including through low- or zero-percent financing, as well as unspecified risk mitigation tools, they said.

Birol’s statement came as U.S. President Donald Trump issued a threat to Iran that “a whole civilisation will die tonight” unless Tehran accepted an ultimatum to open the Strait of Hormuz, previously an international waterway through which a fifth of global oil and liquefied natural gas typically passed.

Birol recently told French newspaper Le Figaro that the current oil and gas crisis triggered by Iran’s blockade of the Strait of Hormuz is “more serious than the ones in 1973, 1979 and 2022 together”.