Oil prices dropped more than 7 per cent after Western nations released the biggest amount of oil from their emergency strategic stocks since 1991, in a warning shot aimed at Opec, the oil producers’ cartel.
The International Energy Agency agreed to release 60m barrels of oil in the coming month to offset the daily production loss of 1.5m barrels of high quality oil from Libya, the north African country engulfed in a civil war.
The US led the release, providing 50 per cent of the crude oil, with Japan, Germany, France, Spain and Italy providing most of the rest. The IEA said that it was in consultations with China, the world’s second-largest oil consumer but declined to say whether Beijing would join the effort.
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