VIENNA: The IEA order to release emergency oil stocks should be halted immediately, OPEC's Secretary General said at the end of cooperation talks with the European Union. Years of producer-consumer harmony have come under threat after the International Energy Agency last week ordered the release of 60 million barrels of oil following the collapse of an OPEC meeting early in the month without a deal. "I hope this practice will be stopped and stopped immediately," Secretary General Abdullah Al-Badri told a news conference in Vienna following EU-OPEC dialogue. "We don't see a good reason to release this quantity and I hope the IEA will refrain from using this practice." The dialogue bringing together representatives of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and EU consumer countries has taken place every year since June 2005. Typically, it has been an uneventful debate of topics including the impact of speculation and the need for regulation. EU officials insisted Monday's talks had been constructive, although they accepted both sides had taken a different view of the IEA reserves release. "Obviously, there was a disagreement on this particular issue," said Tamas Fellegi, president of the EU's energy council and also Hungary's development minister. "Even if the IEA made this action, it has to remain extraordinary and limited in time, this is very important, and should not undermine the cooperation between the EU and OPEC and should not disrupt the market mechanisms." Immediately after the June 8 OPEC meeting collapsed without a new supply deal, leading exporter Saudi Arabia said it would pump all the oil the market needed, but the IEA still ordered a release from emergency stocks. The IEA presented the emergency reserves release as a response to the loss of Libyan oil output to civil war, but Iran's Acting Oil Minister Mohammad Aliabadi said it was meddling that contradicted free-market principles. World oil prices rallied Tuesday as traders took their cue from buoyant stock markets and signs that Europe would hash out a deal to defuse the Greek debt crisis. New York's main contract, West Texas Intermediate (WTI) light, sweet crude for delivery in August, jumped $2.28 to close at $92.89. In London, Brent North Sea crude for August leapt $2.79 to close at $108.78 on the IntercontinentalExchange. The rallies marked the sharpest gains in the two benchmark crudes since Thursday.
