The 32 member states of the International Energy Agency’s (IEA) have held an emergency meeting to assess the situation in the Middle East as the US-Israeli war on Iran continues to roil global energy markets.
Fatih Birol, the agency’s executive director, said the talks on Tuesday aimed to assess “the current security of supply and market conditions” amid the conflict.
“I have convened an extraordinary meeting of IEA member governments, which will take place later today to assess the current security of supply and market conditions to inform a subsequent decision on whether to make emergency stocks of IEA countries available to the market,” Birol said before the discussions.
“In oil markets, conditions have deteriorated in recent days. In addition to the challenges of transit through the Strait of Hormuz, a substantial amount of oil production has been curtailed. This is creating significant and growing risks for the market,” he said.
On the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, Italy’s Environment and Energy Minister Gilberto Pichetto Fratin said that “countries have committed to showing solidarity by using stockpiled reserves in order to compensate for the lack of availability at the global level”.
But the IEA, whose member states currently hold more than 1.2 billion barrels of public emergency oil stocks, did not announce any actions to address the situation after Tuesday’s meeting.
This week, oil prices hit their highest levels since mid‑2022 amid concerns of prolonged shipping disruptions linked to the war and reduced output from some key producers in countries that have been targeted by retaliatory Iranian strikes.
While the market reversed late in the day on Monday, with benchmarks falling below $90 a barrel, uncertainty persists around how long the United States-Israel war will drag on.
The Strait of Hormuz, a critical Gulf waterway through which about one-fifth of the world’s oil supplies passes, has effectively been shut down as a result of the war.
“If this drags on, it is not just going to be energy prices” that are affected, Al Jazeera’s Osama Bin Javaid explained. “It is going to have an impact on global economies.”
Bin Javaid noted that the extraordinary IEA meeting comes after Group of Seven (G7) countries met to discuss possible actions to help stabilise global energy markets.
European governments have been on edge about the prospect of a repeat of the energy crisis they faced in 2022, when prices surged to record peaks after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
“The IEA will be presenting an in-depth analysis of the pros and cons of releasing stocks now,” the European Union’s Energy Commissioner Dan Jorgensen said before the agency’s meeting.
Earlier on Tuesday, G7 energy ministers stopped short of deciding on the release of strategic oil reserves in a call, instead asking the IEA to assess the situation before acting.
“Everyone is willing to take measures to stabilise the market, including the United States,” French Finance Minister Roland Lescure told reporters after the latest talks.
“We have asked the IEA to elaborate scenarios for a potential oil stock release; we need to be ready to act at any moment,” he added.
EU leaders also discussed competitiveness, including energy prices, on a call later in the day with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, Belgian Prime Minister Bart De Wever, and others.
They agreed that the European Council must take decisions on the pressing issue of energy prices, a German government spokesperson said.
“Measures must be targeted, temporary, and well-coordinated,” a statement said.