US to release 172 million barrels of oil from strategic petroleum reserve

The U.S. will release 172 million barrels of oil from its strategic petroleum reserve in a bid to reduce oil prices that have soared due to supply shocks from the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran, U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright said on Wednesday.

Wright said the release is part of a broader release of 400 million barrels of oil agreed to by the 32-nation International Energy Agency earlier in the day.

Wright said the release will begin next week and will take about 120 days to deliver.

The U.S. and Israel began attacks on Iran on February 28. Iran has responded with its own strikes on Israel ‌and Gulf ⁠countries with U.S. bases.

Raising the stakes for the global economy, Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said it would block oil shipments from the Gulf unless the U.S. and Israeli attacks cease. The war has shaken markets around the world.

When asked earlier on Wednesday whether he was looking at the threshold for the strategic petroleum reserve, President Donald ​Trump said Washington will "reduce it a little bit."

"The United States has arranged to more than replace these strategic reserves with approximately 200 million barrels within the next year," the U.S. energy secretary said in a statement.

-Kanishka Singh and Ryan Patrick Jones/Reuters