Asia Needs to Start Strategic Oil Reserves – IEA

(Reuters) – Asia should push ahead with costly emergency oil stockpiles even though the West’s huge government reserves have been unable to quell market fears of a shortage, the head of the International Energy Agency (IEA) said on Saturday.

“They have to start — perhaps only a few days (worth) at the beginning,” said Claude Mandil, executive director of the IEA, the West’s energy watchdog.

“It could take several years to get to the 90-day (OECD) level,” he told Reuters after a meeting of southeast Asian energy ministers in Laos.
Reuters