South Korea releases less than a third of oil products under IEA plan

South Korea has so far released less than a third of the oil products earmarked under an International Energy Agency plan to bolster supplies, while no crude has been lifted yet, state-run Korea National Oil Corp (KNOC) said on Wednesday.

The release started on June 30, an economy ministry source told Reuters by phone, and 29 per cent of the oil products that will be made available had been released as of Wednesday, said a spokesman at KNOC.

The release of crude "is still under negotiation with refiners, but it will be released by the end of this month," the spokesman said. The entire crude volume has been sold, and the lifting dates are getting finalised, another spokesman said.

A total of 1.519 million barrels of oil products and 1.948 million barrels of crude oil will be released, the KNOC spokesman said, slightly different from the previously announced preliminary numbers of 2 million barrels of crude and 1.46 million barrels of products.

South Korea and Japan are the two northeast Asian contributors to the IEA's release of 60 million barrels of oil, intended to plug a gap in supplies of Libyan crude.

In Japan, the IEA emergency stockpile release is taking place from commercial inventories held by private firms, so it is not possible to determine what the proportion of the total 7.9 million barrels will be crude or products, or how much has been sold before the end of the 30-day release period that started on June 27.

Trade ministry officials have said that it is up to oil refiners and importers to decide which commercial reserves to draw down, crude or products, even though the government would prefer an all-products release because it would have an immediate impact on markets.