By Liz Hampton
PLATTEVILLE, Colorado, March 9 (Reuters) – The U.S. is considering coordinating sales of oil from the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve with releases from other countries as prices soar during the war on Iran, Energy Secretary Chris Wright said on Monday.
Wright also said the U.S. has “some other options” on allowing more sales of Russian oil held in tankers on the water in Asia. Late last week, for instance, Washington issued a 30-day waiver allowing the sale of Russian crude currently stranded at sea to continue to India.
“We are talking about coordinated releases from the SPR,” Wright told reporters gathered at a natural gas plant in Colorado. The U.S. SPR, located on the coasts of Texas and Louisiana, holds 415 million barrels of oil, more than what the entire world uses in four days.
Global and domestic oil futures settled on Monday at the highest level since August 2022 as the war led by the U.S. and Israel stranded tankers and shut in oil production in the Middle East.
The International Energy Agency, the West’s energy watchdog, on Monday called for a coordinated release of oil, and G7 countries agreed to closely monitor developments in the energy markets. No release has yet been announced.
Fatih Birol, the IEA head, told G7 finance ministers on Monday that his group’s members hold more than 1.2 billion barrels of public emergency oil stocks and a further 600 million barrels of industry stocks are under government obligation.
The U.S. was not considering imposing restrictions on exports of U.S. energy as a way to control prices, Wright said.
(Reporting by Liz Hampton; Writing by Timothy Gardner; Editing by Mark Porter and David Gregorio)
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