Directive 2009/119 - Obligation on Member States to maintain minimum stocks of crude oil and/or petroleum products - Main contents

EN

Official Journal of the European Union

L 265/9

The supply of crude oil and petroleum products to the Community remains very important, particularly for the transport sector and the chemicals industry.

The increasing concentration of production, dwindling oil reserves and growing worldwide consumption of petroleum products are all contributing to an increased risk of supply difficulties.

The European Council, in its Action Plan (2007 to 2009), entitled ‘Energy Policy for Europe’, underlined the need to enhance security of supply for the European Union (EU) as a whole and for each Member State, inter alia, by reviewing the Union’s oil stocks mechanisms, with special reference to the availability of oil in the event of a crisis.

That objective requires, among other things, greater convergence between the Community system and the system provided for by the International Energy Agency (hereinafter ‘the IEA’).

Under Council Directive 2006/67/EC of 24 July 2006 imposing an obligation on Member States to maintain minimum stocks of crude oil and/or petroleum products (4), stocks are calculated on the basis of average daily inland consumption during the previous calendar year. However, stockholding obligations under the Agreement on an International Energy Programme of 18 November 1974 (hereinafter ‘the IEA Agreement’) are calculated on the basis of net imports of oil and petroleum products. For that reason, and owing to other differences in methodology, the way in which stockholding obligations and Community emergency stocks are calculated should be brought more into line with the calculation methods used under the IEA Agreement, notwithstanding the facts that the IEA calculation methods may have to be evaluated in light of technological improvements during the last decades, and that non-IEA members that are fully dependent on imports may require a longer period for adapting their stockholding obligations. Further amendments to the methods and procedures for calculating stock levels may prove necessary and beneficial in order to further increase coherence with IEA practice, including, for example, changes that lead to a lowering for certain Member States of the reduction percentage of 10 % applied in the calculation of stocks, that would allow a different treatment of naphtha stocks, or that would allow the stocks held in tankers in territorial waters of a Member State to be counted.

Indigenous production of oil can in itself contribute to security of supply and might therefore provide justification for oil-producing Member States to hold lower stocks than other Member States. A derogation of that kind should not, however, result in stockholding obligations that differ substantially from those that apply under Directive 2006/67/EC. It therefore follows that the stockholding obligation for certain Member States should be set on the basis of inland oil consumption and not on the basis of imports.

The Presidency Conclusions of the Brussels European Council of 8 and 9 March 2007 show that it is becoming increasingly vital and pressing for the Community to put in place an integrated energy policy, combining action at European and Member...