▲ This photo, provided by the Korea National Oil Corp., shows the company's strategic oil reserve complex in Seosan, some 120 kilometers southwest of Seoul. (PHOTO NOT FOR SALE) (Yonhap)

S Korea-oil reserve release

S. Korea to release 22.46 mln barrels from oil reserves under IEA release plan

SEOUL, March 12 (Yonhap) -- South Korea plans to release 22.46 million barrels of oil from its strategic reserves in line with an agreement among International Energy Agency (IEA) members to make 400 million barrels of oil from their reserves available to the market, Seoul's industry ministry has said.

The ministry announced the plan for the release on Wednesday, shortly after the 32-member IEA unanimously agreed to carry out the agency's largest-ever oil stock release in a collective action to help address disruptions in oil markets that stem from the ongoing war between the United States, Israel and Iran.

The contribution of each country in the collective endeavor was calculated in proportion to its share of the member countries' total oil consumption. South Korea's planned release accounts for 5.6 percent of the total 400 million barrels to be released.

"(South Korea) assesses that close cooperation with the IEA this time will contribute greatly to stabilizing the international oil market," an industry ministry official said.

"Going forward, we plan to minimize the impact on the people's economy and prices by closely cooperating with major countries to respond to the high oil prices stemming from the Middle East situation," he added.

In a press release, the IEA said that the emergency stocks will be made available to the market "over a timeframe that is appropriate to the national circumstances of each member country," and will be supplemented by additional emergency measures by some countries.

After the U.S. and Israel kicked off a joint campaign of military strikes on Iran on Feb. 28, oil prices surged. Disruptions to shipping through the Strait of Hormuz -- responsible for about one-fifth of the world's oil supplies -- pushed up prices.

"The oil market challenges we are facing are unprecedented in scale, therefore I am very glad that IEA Member countries have responded with an emergency collective action of unprecedented size," IEA Executive Director Fatih Birol was quoted as saying in the release.

"Oil markets are global so the response to major disruptions needs to be global too. Energy security is the founding mandate of the IEA, and I am pleased that IEA members are showing strong solidarity in taking decisive action together."

The coordinated IEA stock release is the sixth in the history of the agency, which was founded in 1974 for a collective response to disruptions in global oil supplies. Previous collective actions were taken in 1991, 2005, 2011, and twice in 2022, according to the agency.

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