Dozens of countries agree to release 400 million barrels of oil

The International Energy Agency siad member countries had unanimously agreed to release 400 million barrels of oil from their reserves

The International Energy Agency said Wednesday that member countries had unanimously agreed to release 400 million barrels of oil from their reserves in a bid to ease prices that are soaring due to the Iran war.

“The oil market challenges we are facing are unprecedented in scale, therefore I am very glad that IEA Member countries have responded with an emergency collective action of unprecedented size,” IEA Executive Director Fatih Birol said.

The agency did not set out a definitive timeline for when the release — the largest ever by IEA nations — would begin. "The IEA Secretariat will provide further details of how this collective action will be implemented in due course," a statement said.

Following the IEA announcement, U.S. crude oil traded around $84 per barrel, down only a few dollars from before it, a sign that the market is not expecting this move to provide quick relief or to rapidly increase global supplies.

Since the war with Iran began, the Strait of Hormuz, off its southwestern coast, has been essentially shut to tanker traffic amid threats from its military. An estimated 20 million barrels of oil typically transit the strait every day, helping meet the world's daily demand for more than 100 million barrels of crude oil.