Iran disgruntled with IEA

Iran's Oil Minister Mohammad Aliabadi has accused the International Energy Agency (IEA) of breaching its own code of conduct and "principles" by intervening in what he considers to be a well supplied oil markets. Speaking ahead of an energy summit with the EU, Aliabadi said: “There is no additional need for supply on the market…The market is under normal conditions now--supply and demand are desirable."

Aliabadi's comments were prompted by IEA's decision to release some of its oil stocks to make up for lost Libyan supplies. He said, “…the IEA, have these principles. Why are they not abiding by those principles? Instead they are intervening in the market…We believe that prices have to be set by markets."

The IEA's move has led to a rapid fall in the price of crude oil, however, Aliadabi said it was not the prices that concerned Iran, adding: “We are worried about the principles and how they are being put into implementation."

IEA officials counteracted Aliabadi's comments saying they undertook the emergency release, just the third in the agency's history, in response to a lengthy outage of Libyan crude.

A number of IEA members, including Germany and Japan, released equal amounts of oil and refined products. The US released only crude, while France and Italy, released only refined goods. According to an IEA report, a total of 41.6 million of the 60.6 million in emergency oil will come from crude oil with the rest coming from refined products.

Sources: The Wall Street Journal, Fox Business, Dow Jones

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