Almost 300,000 barrels of diesel oil held in Britain as part of New Zealand's emergency stocks are reportedly being released in response to the ongoing impact on energy security after Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
The New Zealand Herald newspaper reports that the country's energy and resources minister Dr Megan Woods said the 31 members of the International Energy Agency (IEA) agreed to take collective action to release an additional 120 million barrels of global emergency oil stocks to help offset the loss of Russian oil exports after sanctions were imposed on the country following the invasion.
New Zealand, on the other side of the world from Britain, would release 483,000 barrels from its emergency oil stocks as part of additional action taken by member countries. Dr Woods is reported as saying: "Our release is made up of around 184,000 barrels of crude oil held in Spain and close to 299,000 barrels of diesel held in the United Kingdom."
The report did not say where the stocks were held or how they would be transported. She is quoted as saying: "The size of contributions to the stockdraw has now been determined by the IEA and New Zealand has committed slightly more than the amount requested by the IEA as our ticket contracts as released as a whole."
Dr Woods added that the contribution followed the release of 369,000 barrels of crude oil last month as part of the initial collective action to release 62.7 million barrels held by IEA members. She said: "New Zealand's membership of the IEA requires it to hold stocks equivalent to at least 90 days of net oil and imports. New Zealand buys emergency reserve stocks that are held offshore as part of this obligation and help to manage potential disruptions in the oil market."
She said there had been a great deal of volatility in global oil markets since the invasion and this further action, coupled with the US move to release 180 million barrels of oil over the next six months, would help to provide some certainty to the market. The Herald reports that, over the next six months, around 240 million barrels of emergency oil stocks, the equivalent of well over one million barrels per day, will be made available to the global market. Emergency oil stocks in IEA member countries are either in the form of public stocks that are either government owned or by specialised agencies, or stocks held by industry under an obligation of the government.
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