Brussels, 08/10/2001 (Agence Europe) - In anticipation of military action after the attacks on 11 September, the members of the International Energy Agency (IEA) adopted, last Tuesday, an emergency contingency response plan on oil to counter any disruption of supplies. The plan provides for IEA member states to be able to put additional quantities of oil on the market if supplies are disrupted or if there is a widespread belief that serious risk of supply disruption is imminent. The initial response level provides, over a 14-day period, for an additional oil equivalent of 2 million barrels per day to be placed on the market shared out as follows (in kb/dy): Australia 33, Austria 12.3, Belgium 23.6, Canada 90.7, Czech Republic 8.2, Denmark 9.2, Finland 9.6, France 88.6, Germany 132.4, Greece 16.1, Hungary 6.8, Ireland 6.7, Italy 85.7, Japan 259, Korea 97.3, Luxembourg 2.5, the Netherlands 26.5, New Zealand 6.1, Portugal 15.3, Spain 64.9, Sweden 14.3, Switzerland 13.3, Turkey 30.7, the United Kingdom 74.7 and the United States 866.7. Each Member States will be able to meet its requirements by: tapping into reserve stocks (including 90-day emergency reserves), demand restraint, fuel-switching and oil production measures.
The plan will be activated by the IEA Director General who will notify Member Sates of the date when it will be implemented. Before this date, any Member State will be able to announce that it will not be taking part. In this respect, sources close to the Belgian EU Council Presidency confided in EUROPE that Belgium hopes there will be a meeting of the Council's group on oil issues (which has not met since June 1999!). This would allow the Fifteen to hold an exchange of views on their conception of how the contingency plan should be carried out, and for the Union to finalise a coherent position towards its Agency partners. If one or several IEA member states do not participate, and if their failure to participate makes it difficult to achieve the 2mb/dy objective, then the IEA Executive Director will suspend activation of the plan pending a collection decision by the Governing Board.
Finally, it is foreseen that, after the plan has been activated, the countries applying for Agency membership will be invited to coordinate their action with the Agency in order to strengthen the impact of the plan. The IEA considers that the public announcement of its plan will give prominence to dialogue with the main oil producing countries and, to the extent that it can be substantiated, will verify their readiness to make incremental oil available to the market.