Washington — The Group of Seven industrialised nations announced on Friday that they have agreed to coordinate the release of 100 million barrels of oil and refined fuel products, including diesel, from strategic reserves over the next four months, in a move aimed at easing fuel prices that reached record highs in the United States earlier in the week.
The Announcement
French President Emmanuel Macron, who holds the rotating G7 presidency this year, chaired a videoconference of G7 leaders on Friday to coordinate the response. Following the call, the group issued a joint statement committing to the release. The statement said the countries would implement their commitments through a coordinated release via the International Energy Agency of 100 million barrels, to begin immediately over four months, including a front-loaded substantial diesel release within the first 20 days by G7 members and partners.
Macron described the agreement as one in which all parties had committed together to releasing strategic reserves in the proportions discussed, with a particular focus on diesel. President Donald Trump responded to the announcement on social media, stating that Europe had agreed to release a massive amount of its heavily stocked diesel oil. Trump separately said the diesel release would begin immediately.
The G7, comprising the United States, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the United Kingdom, also reaffirmed a commitment to refrain from imposing export restrictions on energy and energy products between member countries. Macron stated that Trump had not threatened to impose an embargo on US diesel exports during the discussion, and characterised the talks as constructive.
The Price Context
The release follows a period of sharply rising diesel prices in the United States. According to the American Automobile Association, the national average price for a gallon of diesel stood at $6.37 on Friday, October 2, after having reached a record high of $6.52 on September 22. The surge in prices had prompted the Trump administration to press European governments over the preceding week to release their strategic diesel stocks, with Trump also threatening to impose a ban on US diesel exports as a separate measure to bring down domestic prices. That threat had drawn concern from within the American energy industry.
Data compiled by the commodity tracking firm Kpler showed that at least 16.5 million barrels per day left the Middle East in September, reflecting the scale of regional oil flows during the period in which prices rose.
Relation to the March 2026 Release
Friday's announcement builds on an earlier coordinated release agreed by International Energy Agency member countries in March 2026. At that time, IEA members agreed to release approximately 426 million barrels of oil and refined products to help stabilise the global oil market, with European Union countries committing roughly 92 million barrels of that total, weighted toward refined products such as diesel.
That March release was prompted by a supply shock connected to the conflict involving Iran, which had disrupted shipping through the Strait of Hormuz and removed an estimated 15 million barrels from the global market according to analysts cited at the time. The March release itself was reported to exceed the 182 million barrels released by IEA members in 2022 following Russia's invasion of Ukraine, making it the largest coordinated release in the agency's history at that time.
Questions remain, based on public reporting, as to whether the newly announced 100 million barrels are an entirely new commitment in addition to the March pledge or represent the implementation of a remaining portion of that earlier pledge; the G7's Friday statement did not explicitly clarify this distinction.
Institutional and Legal Framework: The International Energy Agency
The International Energy Agency was established in 1974 under the Agreement on an International Energy Program, adopted in the aftermath of the 1973 oil crisis, with the objective of enabling member countries to respond collectively to disruptions in global oil supply. Under the Agreement, IEA member countries are required to maintain emergency oil stocks equivalent to at least 90 days of net oil imports. The IEA's Coordinated Emergency Response Measures mechanism allows member governments to jointly release strategic petroleum reserves, implement demand restraint, or authorise fuel switching in the event of a significant supply disruption, with release decisions requiring agreement among member states acting through the agency's governing board.
IEA member countries collectively hold more than 1.2 billion barrels of public emergency oil stocks, in addition to approximately 600 million barrels held by private industry under government-mandated obligations in various member states. The coordinated release mechanism has been invoked on a limited number of occasions historically, including after the 1991 Gulf War, after Hurricane Katrina in 2005, during the 2011 Libyan crisis, and following Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
The Group of Seven is an informal intergovernmental forum rather than a treaty-based international organisation, and its joint statements, including Friday's commitment, do not carry binding legal force under international law in the manner of a treaty obligation.
Implementation of the pledged reserve releases therefore depends on each member country's domestic legal and administrative authority over its own strategic reserves, coordinated multilaterally through the IEA's existing emergency response framework. In the United States, the Strategic Petroleum Reserve is governed by the Energy Policy and Conservation Act of 1975, which vests authority in the President, acting through the Department of Energy, to authorise drawdowns and sales from the reserve, including in circumstances falling short of a severe energy supply interruption as statutorily defined.
Separately from the coordinated reserve release, reporting has indicated that the Trump administration had been considering a ban on US diesel exports as a unilateral measure to reduce domestic prices, a step that reportedly drew objections from within the US energy industry.
Any such export restriction would fall within the President's authority under the Export Administration Act framework and related statutory provisions governing the regulation of energy exports, though the G7's Friday statement, in which members reaffirmed a commitment to refrain from export restrictions on energy products, suggests that this specific measure has not been adopted as part of the coordinated response announced by the group.
The announcement comes against the backdrop of the United States midterm congressional elections scheduled for November 3, 2026. Reporting has noted that Trump and his party face political pressure to address rising fuel prices ahead of that vote, which forms part of the broader domestic political context in which the administration's pressure on European allies to release diesel stocks, and its own threat of an export ban, were reported to have occurred.
