Germany and Austria said on Wednesday they are releasing parts of their oil reserves following an International Energy Agency request for members to release a record 400 million barrels to help temper energy price spikes due to the Iran war.
Japan also said it will release some of its reserves starting Monday.
Group of Seven energy ministers met Tuesday at IEA headquarters in Paris. IEA executive director Fatih Birol said afterwards they had discussed all available options, including making IEA emergency oil stocks available to the market.
The largest-ever previous collective release of emergency stocks by IEA member countries was 182.7 million barrels, in the wake of the energy shock prompted by Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
IEA members currently hold over 1.2 billion barrels of public emergency oil stocks, with a further 600 million barrels of industry stocks held under government obligation.
It was not immediately clear how much Germany and Austria were releasing.
Germany’s economy minister Katherina Reiche said the country would release parts of its oil reserves following the IEA request “to release oil reserves amounting to 400 million barrels, which is a good 54 million tonnes.”
