The move is part of the International Energy Agency\u2019s (IEA) agreement to discharge 400 million barrels from emergency oil reserves, the largest-ever release, as governments seek to contain a spike in energy prices driven by the Middle East war.<\/p>\n
The Paris-based IEA is a global organisation made up of member country governments, which each hold strategic oil reserves in case of threats to fuel supply.<\/p>\n
Ireland is a member of the IEA and typically aims to hold 90 days of oil supply in the National Oil Reserves Agency (NORA). That \u2018Irish\u2019 oil is held in sites across Ireland, including close to the country\u2019s only refinery at Whitegate in Cork, as well as in Spain, Denmark and Sweden.<\/p>\n
The reserve is funded though a levy on the fuels industry.<\/p>\n
The price spike, as a result of the US and Israeli war with Iran, sent prices towards record levels earlier this week. <\/p>\n
“The oil market challenges we are facing are unprecedented in scale,” IEA executive director Fatih Birol said in a statement today.<\/p>\n
“IEA member countries have responded with an emergency collective action of unprecedented size.”<\/p>\n
The decision was unanimous, Mr Birol said, without detailing the pace of the release.<\/p>\n
Oil soared to almost $120 a barrel in London earlier this week as flows through the Persian Gulf’s critical Strait of Hormuz remained essentially halted, though futures have since eased \u2013 in part on expectations that governments would tap their oil reserves.<\/p>\n
The IEA, which co-ordinates stockpile releases for OECD countries, has said its 32 members hold more than 1.2 billion barrels in public emergency stockpiles, including the largest buffer, the US Strategic Petroleum Reserve.<\/p>\n
There’s a further 600 million barrels of industry stocks under government obligation.<\/p>\n
Here, Climate, Energy and Environment Minister Darragh O’Brien said: “My department convened the Oil Security of Supply Group earlier this week [Monday, 9 March] to collate information from the oil industry on the supply situation as it pertains to local markets. They reported no immediate supply concerns. The views of the industry will factor in decisions around this release.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The move is part of the International Energy Agency\u2019s (IEA) agreement to discharge 400 million barrels from emergency…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":171282,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[72,14486,61,60],"class_list":["post-341626","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-business","tag-donal-odonovan","tag-ie","tag-ireland"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/341626","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=341626"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/341626\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/171282"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=341626"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=341626"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=341626"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}