Oil releases so far are just 9% of stocks, “can come back again if a problem” – IEA head

MILAN (Reuters) – The two oil stock releases carried out so far amount to only 9% of overall stocks, Fatih Birol, head of the International Energy Agency (IEA), said on Thursday.

“We can come back again if there is a problem,” he said while speaking remotely during an event in Florence, Italy.

Birol said a situation where a short-term scramble for alternative energy sources to Russia prolonged reliance on volatile fossil fuels had to be avoided.

The IEA last month listed members’ contributions to a 120-million-barrel release of crude and oil products from emergency stockpiles to bring down global oil prices after the beginning of the Ukraine crisis.

(Reporting by Stephen Jewkes, Writing by Federico Maccioni, Editing by)