The International Energy Agency (IEA) will release emergency oil reserves only in case of a supply disruption and not to help the economy or lower prices, its new executive director told Reuters on Thursday.
Maria van der Hoeven, who took over from Nobuo Tanaka on 1 September said the agency’s release of oil from its emergency reserves in June was a success and there was no plan for a further move, according to a Reuters report.
“It is an answer to a supply disruption and it ought to be an answer to a supply disruption,” Van der Hoeven told Reuters in an interview.
The IEA’s 28 members are required to hold stocks equal to 90 days of their consumption. Its decision in June to release 60 million barrels, in the wake of the loss of Libya’s oil exports due to civil war, was only the third in the agency’s 37-year history.
“You do it for the right reason, and the right reason is always to have a solution for a disruption of supply,” van der Hoeven said in an interview in her office at the IEA’s headquarters overlooking the landmark Eiffel Tower in the French capital. “That’s what it’s intended to be.”
She dismissed a widespread perception at the time of the IEA release that the agency had acted to protect industrialized countries from rising oil prices, saying a change of remit had not occurred. “I wasn’t there when the debate was going on, but definitely not,” she said.
Van der Hoeven, is visiting Abdullah Salem el-Badri, the Secretary General of OPEC, today, in an attempt to improve relations after a war of words broke out following the IEA reserve release.
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