Energy Agency Selling Oil Emergency Reserves

New York, NY, June 24, 2011 -- The U.S. and other nations that depend on oil imports will release and sell 60 million barrels of crude from emergency stocks.

The release by the International Energy Agency, a group of more than two dozen countries, covers only what the world uses roughly every 16 hours. But it was enough to send oil prices lower, at least temporarily.

It will be the largest sale of crude ever from world strategic reserves and only the third since the IEA was formed in 1974 after the Arab oil embargo.