Over one-third of 80 damaged Middle East energy sites severely hit: IEA
Middle East energy supply could take up to 2 years to recover to pre-crisis levels, says International Energy Agency chief Fatih Birol.
More than 80 energy facilities in the Middle East have been damaged since the Feb. 28 start of the Iran war, with over one-third of them classified as severely or very severely hit, the head of the International Energy Agency (IEA) has said.
Speaking at the Atlantic Council event in Washington, DC, Fatih Birol said on Monday that the scale of destruction to oil fields, refineries, terminals, and other infrastructure means supply recovery will take time even if the conflict were to end immediately.
“This is one of the most critical issues, and different than the past, many of the facilities are badly damaged,” he said, adding that the IEA is monitoring all affected sites.
Birol, a Turkish economist and energy expert, said restoring regional energy supply to where it was before the crisis could take as long as two years, underscoring the depth of the disruption across the region’s oil and gas system.
He described the current turmoil as “the largest energy security threat in history,” saying the losses in oil and gas supply already far exceed those seen during the 1973 and 1979 oil shocks and after the start of the Ukraine war in 2022.
Emergency oil stockpile release
Birol said the world had lost around 30 million barrels per day of oil supply so far, compared with roughly 5 million barrels per day in each of the 1970s oil crises. In natural gas, he said the disruption has also exceeded the roughly 75 billion cubic metres lost since the start of the Ukraine war.
On emergency response measures, Birol said the IEA had already coordinated a record release of 400 million barrels from strategic stockpiles in March, calling it the largest and quickest such action in the agency’s history.
He said he hoped another emergency oil stockpile release would not be needed, but stressed that the agency stands ready to act if market conditions worsen.
Still, he cautioned that emergency reserves alone cannot offset prolonged infrastructure losses, particularly in countries with weak finances or limited storage capacity.
In addition to oil and gas, he warned that the conflict is disrupting flows of fertilisers, petrochemicals, helium, and other critical commodities essential for global supply chains.