ension with Iran: West Readies Emergency Oil Supply

Western countries prepare to tap emergency crude oil stockpiles if Iran blocks the Strait of Hormuz, the world’s most important oil portal

As a precaution to Iran’s threat to shutdown the Strait of Hormuz, Western powers prepared a contingency plan this week to tap record volume of crude oil stockpiles. Tehran announced Friday its plans to block the world’s most important oil shipping lane in an attempt to avert sanctions of its nuclear program.

Senior executives of the International Energy Agency (IEA) emergency plan would release as much as 14 million barrels per day (bpd) of government owned oil stored in the U.S., Europe, Japan and other importers. Similar to the government’s response to Iraq’s 1990 invasion of Kuwait, action of this scale would be over five times greater, setting a new record as the state’s largest release in history.