To curb rising fuel prices US, UK , France considering strategic oil release
French ministers Wednesday said France was talking with the US and the UK on a possible release of strategic oil stocks that would help in reducing fuel prices.
"It is the US that has asked and France has welcomed favourably this hypothesis," French Energy Minister Eric Besson told reporters after the weekly ministers' meeting .
Besson said the nations were awaiting a decision on this from the International Energy Agency (IEA) that coordinates emergency stock releases in case oil supply was severely disrupted.
French budget minister and government spokesperson Valerie Pecresse also told journalists that France had joined the US and Britain in the IEA consultations for an authorisation to release strategic stocks.
"France is accompanying the US and UK in the IEA consultation, which could allow the release of strategic oil reserves in order to break the rising price spiral," Pecresse said.
Bession last week said releasing strategic reserves was one of the options being considered to counter rising oil prices.
The Paris- based IEA coordinated the release of 60 million barrels of crude and oil products in June after Libyan output was disrupted by an armed uprising against Muammar Gaddafi.
The agency also made supplies available during the 1991 Persian Gulf War and when Hurricane Katrina damaged oil rigs and refineries in the Gulf of Mexico in 2005.
Britain had agreed to participate in the release of oil reserves early this month.
For France, the release of strategic oil stock could happen "in a matter of weeks", an unnamed French presidential source told French newspaper Le Monde.
Source: Europe News.Net
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