BUSINESS

IEA still sees no need to release oil stocks

September 01, 2017
Technicians inspect a beam pump on the premises of the Canadian oil company Vermilion Energy in Andrezel, some 50 kms southeast of Paris, on August 31, 2017. — AFP
Technicians inspect a beam pump on the premises of the Canadian oil company Vermilion Energy in Andrezel, some 50 kms southeast of Paris, on August 31, 2017. — AFP

LONDON — The International Energy Agency (IEA) still sees no need for a coordinated international release of oil stocks after Hurricane Harvey disrupted a large chunk of US refining and some production facilities, it said on Friday.

The Paris-based agency, which coordinates energy policies of industrialized nations, said it was monitoring the situation in Texas and Louisiana to assess the hurricane's impact on oil and gas markets and was in very close contact with US authorities.

"To date, market mechanisms and government assistance have been adequate. The IEA stands ready to act as required," it said in a statement.

"There are high levels of stocks in the affected regions and in the United States as a whole. These stocks are being supplemented by imports of gasoline to the East Coast of the United States and the US Secretary of Energy has taken action to ease localszed crude oil shortages in Texas by providing crude oil loans from the US Strategic Petroleum Reserve."

Meanwhile, the US Energy Department on Thursday released 1 million barrels of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve and a White House adviser said more could flow after Tropical Storm Harvey inundated Gulf Coast refineries and drove up motor fuel prices.

In the first tapping of the reserve for an emergency since Hurricane Isaac in 2012, two emergency exchanges of oil of 500,000 barrels will be delivered to the Phillips 66 refinery in Lake Charles, Louisiana, the department said.

That plant has not been hit by Harvey, which hammered Houston and the Gulf Coast with catastrophic flooding and shut about a quarter of US refinery capacity.

The release of 1 million barrels is small compared with US demand of nearly 20 million barrels per day. The move did not halt rapidly rising gasoline prices, which surged more than 13 percent on Thursday to a two-year high above $2 a gallon ahead of the high-demand Labor Day holiday.

An adviser to President Donald Trump told a White House briefing that more oil could be sprung from the SPR.

"I think we would be very comfortable tapping into that and providing that alleviated resource,” homeland security adviser Tom Bossert told reporters.

Under the exchange, 400,000 barrels of sweet crude and 600,000 barrels of sour crude oil will be sent via pipeline from an SPR cavern in Louisiana to the refinery. The government will lend the crude to Phillips 66, which is required to replace the oil at a later date.

The SPR, established in the early 1970s after the Arab oil embargo caused widespread fuel supply panics, contains 679 million barrels of oil, enough to meet total US needs for 33 days, in heavily guarded underground caverns on the Texas and Louisiana coasts. — Agencies


September 01, 2017
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