IEA to decide on details of diesel stocks release next week, sources say, as market confusion grows

By Giuseppe Fonte, Kate Abnett and Alex Lawler

ROME/LONDON, Oct 6 (Reuters) - The West's energy watchdog will meet next week to work out the details of a diesel stock release as market confusion grows over how many barrels Europe and the US plan to make available to address shortages and record-high prices, sources said.

The surge in diesel prices has turned the fuel, which underpins trucking, agriculture and industry, into a global political and economic concern. The wars in Iran and Ukraine have curtailed exports and damaged refineries, helping drive the rise in prices. 

Under pressure from US President Donald Trump, the Group of Seven major economies agreed on Friday to release 100 million barrels of diesel and crude oil from emergency reserves and pledged to refrain from energy export restrictions. 

They did not provide a breakdown of the volumes of crude, diesel and other products to be released, however, or say which countries would participate.

The governing board of the International Energy Agency, which advises industrialised countries and manages their strategic oil reserves, is expected to decide the details of the stocks release at an October 14-15 board meeting, two people close to the matter said on Tuesday.

The Paris-based IEA did not immediately respond to a request for comment on what was expected to be decided at the board meeting.

The G7 includes the US, UK, Japan and Canada along with EU nations France, Germany and Italy.

DETAILS ON NEW RELEASE UNCLEAR

G7 member Italy would be part of the release, one of the sources said.  

The EU's oil coordination group will meet on Wednesday, a European Commission spokesperson said on Tuesday.

The White House did not immediately respond to a request to clarify details of the stocks release.

The Iran war sparked the biggest emergency stock release ever of 400 million barrels in March, which was coordinated by the IEA.

Announcing the new stocks release, G7 leaders said last Friday they would take into account commitments already fulfilled regarding the previous move.

Oil market participants and some EU government officials were trying on Tuesday to work out the finer points of the Friday announcement.

Russell Hardy, chief executive of Vitol, said at a conference in London on Tuesday that the commodities trading house was still trying to understand the details of the stocks release.

"It wasn't a fully transparent announcement about exactly what was being released where," he said. 

"And so over the next two weeks, we'll see tenders coming out from different bodies, and those tenders will tell us exactly how much oil and in which location it's going to come out."

(Reporting by Alex Lawler in London, Giuseppe Fonte in Rome, Francesca Landini in Milan, Kate Abnett in Brussels and Jarrett Renshaw; Additional reporting by Forrest Crellin in Paris and Robert Harvey in London; Editing by Tomasz Janowski and Joe Bavier)