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The Group of Seven (G7) countries have agreed to release 100 billion barrels of crude oil and diesel from emergency reserves over several months in an effort to reduce soaring energy prices after pressure from United States President Donald Trump.

The US and Israel’s war on Iran, as well as Russia’s war on Ukraine, have triggered a spike in global oil and diesel prices.

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“The emergency release by G7 members will put some downward pressure on prices, particularly global diesel prices. However, the impact would be short-lived given that this is just a temporary solution to the supply crunch,” Hamad Hussain, a climate and commodities economist at Capital Economics, told Al Jazeera.

Oil prices ‌jumped on Thursday and settled up more than $4 a barrel. Global diesel prices also hit a record high last Friday with the average price for a gallon (3.79 litres) of diesel at $6.50, up from $5.61 a month earlier, according to the American Automobile Association (AAA).

In a statement on Thursday, the G7, which includes Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom and the US, with the European Union also represented, said there will also be a “substantial diesel release within the first 20 days” and discussions over “additional diesel releases as necessary” will be held in the coming days.

Will the G7’s energy release stabilise the global energy market?

Here’s what we know:

What has the G7 announced?

After a video conference of G7 leaders chaired by French President Emmanuel Macron on Friday, the group said in a joint statement: “Taking into account commitments that have already been fulfilled, we will implement our commitments with a coordinated release through the IEA of 100 million barrels.”

Earlier this week, the International Energy Agency’s (IEA) Executive Director Fatih Birol said that members had released about two-thirds of the 400-million-barrel agreement.

The G7 energy release will begin immediately and last for four months and will include a substantial diesel release for 20 days. It is not clear how many oil and diesel stocks each member of the group will release.

“We will convene in the context of the IEA in the coming days to discuss the possibility of additional diesel releases as necessary,” the statement said.

“We will coordinate maintenance schedules across G7 refineries to prevent simultaneous capacity shutdowns and temporarily increase utilization rates where feasible,” it added.

The G7 also urged member countries to refrain from imposing export restrictions on energy products among themselves.

Earlier this week, the Trump administration had threatened to impose a ban on US diesel exports and also pressured Europe to release its emergency diesel stocks to help ease soaring diesel prices.

Why are oil and diesel prices so high?

Global energy prices have been soaring due to the US and Israel’s war on Iran, which has disrupted energy exports from the Gulf. Meanwhile, Ukraine’s attacks on Russian energy installations have also disrupted global energy supplies.

The former head of the International Energy Agency’s Oil Industry and Markets Division, Neil Atkinson, told Al Jazeera that there are three key factors contributing to the decline in global diesel supply.

First, “there isn’t diesel coming out of the Middle East to Europe, and Europe took quite a lot of diesel from Saudi Arabia and from Kuwait”.

Second, “Russia has now ceased to export diesel at all” due to “the attacks by Ukraine on Russian refineries”.

“And China is no longer exporting diesel,” he added.

“We’re in a situation where demand remains relatively high and is likely to stay high because of the agricultural harvesting season.”

According to data from the Joint Organizations Data Initiative (JODI) and the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), the US is the world’s largest producer and exporter of diesel. It produces about 240.5 million tonnes and exports around 1.26 million barrels of diesel per day.

Russia is the world’s second-largest diesel exporter, supplying 783,400 barrels per day (bpd) to the global market. Saudi Arabia is the world’s second-largest producer of diesel at 58.4 million tonnes, but it consumes a large portion of its diesel domestically.

Will the G7 energy release bring prices down?

After the G7 announcement, French President Macron, who had co-chaired the meeting, said the group’s move to release the oil will “bring down the prices of petroleum products, particularly diesel”.

The price of Brent crude, the international benchmark, briefly dropped below $100 a barrel after the G7 announcement, but rose to about $102 in the evening.

Naeem Aslam, chief investment officer at Zaye Capital Markets, told Al Jazeera that the G7 energy release was “very much needed”, but the group’s announcement was just to ease off pressure on the energy market.

“The actual structure changes about who is going to release [the energy stocks] and what and where the bans will be lifted, remains an important component in terms of the market,” he said.

Aslam added that by Sunday night, especially before the markets open, the added pressure on energy prices will come off. “But going into Monday morning … we could potentially see the reversal in the market,” he added.

Atkinson, the energy expert, said the G7’s fuel release is welcome but “doesn’t deal with the fundamental problem that the global supply remains lower than normal”.

Atkinson told Al Jazeera that “seven months after this war started in the Middle East, we are still in a situation where the global supply of crude oil or products remains significantly below pre-war levels”.

“We are now in a situation where the focus is on end use of products, mainly diesel, which is what we’re talking about here,” he added.

What has Trump said?

Soaring diesel prices have been a source of tension for the Trump administration and Republicans who fear this will cost them votes in the upcoming November midterm elections.

Last week, Trump pressured Ukraine to stop attacking Russian diesel facilities amid the war.

Then, on Thursday this week, the US president told reporters that his administration “may” ask European countries to release diesel stocks, shortly after Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent urged Europe to “immediately” tap its reserves.

Trump also threatened to ban US diesel exports if Europe did not release emergency diesel stocks.

But on Friday, Trump told reporters at the White House that Washington would not impose a diesel export ban. He said the plan was never really on the table.

“Europe has a lot of diesel, and they’re going to be making a major world contribution, and so are we. And we’re not going to be doing the export ban. We’re going to be doing what we’re supposed to do,” Trump said.

“Trump is scared by diesel prices above $6, which is a price jump of 70 percent compared to before he started the war. This is likely to get worse with US diesel inventories at their lowest seasonal level since records began in 1982.

“So if there is not enough diesel being produced because of the US-Israeli war on Iran, and diesel reserves have been used up, the only way to bring more diesel to the US market is by exporting less,” Frederic Schneider, a nonresident senior fellow at the Middle East Council on Global Affairs, told Al Jazeera on Friday.

After the G7 announcement, Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform: “Europe has just agreed to release a massive amount of their heavily stocked Diesel Oil. The process will begin immediately.”

The White House is also reportedly preparing an executive order to tackle record-high US diesel prices that could be unveiled as early as next week, two people familiar with the process told the Reuters news agency.

Schneider noted that countries are also concerned about high energy prices since diesel and gasoline are important for economies and fulfil different roles.

“While gasoline fuels cars, diesel fuels anything from trucks, freight trains, ships, tractors, harvesters, construction machinery, mining equipment and backup generators. This means gasoline is used more by consumers while diesel is mostly used by producers, meaning a diesel price shock spreads into the price of almost everything else, most prominently food, building materials and anything delivered by truck,” he added.

Farmers are hit twice because diesel prices are rising at the same time as fertiliser prices, both of which have been pushed up by the closure of the Strait of Hormuz.

“A higher diesel price therefore acts like a tax on production and logistics, while higher gasoline prices act like a tax on consumers directly. Like higher gasoline prices, higher diesel prices risk stagflation by pushing up inflation while simultaneously squeezing margins in transport and agriculture, meaning central banks find [themselves] in a dilemma between cutting rates [helping producers] and raising rates [cutting inflation],” he said.

Toronto, Canada: As Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney races to make the country less dependent on the United States, attract billions in new investment and get major projects built faster, his economic overhaul is running into resistance from a group that says it wants many of the same things: organised labour.

The latest clash, over the right to strike, comes after months of mounting pressure on Ottawa from Washington, DC.

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US President Donald Trump, since taking up a second term in office last year, has imposed steep tariffs on Canadian goods and weakened trade agreements – perilous moves as Canada has historically sent close to 80 percent of its exports to its southern neighbour. He has repeatedly piled on with the tariff threats to make Canada the 51st US state.

Canada has responded with retaliatory tariffs, while a broader movement to “Buy Canadian” has taken hold. The hockey-inspired “elbows up” — meaning a readiness to defend against an opponent — has become a national rallying cry.

With trade talks stalled since August, Carney has moved with urgency to shore up the economy and invite new investments. Last month, he announced Bill C-39, known as the Building Canada Strong Act, promising to bring “speed, certainty and predictability” to investors.

Along with measures to speed up approvals for major projects, the bill would also give Ottawa clearer powers to intervene in legal strikes and lockouts in federally regulated workplaces — a provision that has put Carney on a collision course with unions.

Canada’s largest unions have come together against the changes. The largest, the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE), had its national executive go as far as voting to defy the bill’s proposed limits on the right to strike if it passes Parliament without amendments.

CUPE National President Mark Hancock credited Carney’s handling of Trump and said the union’s 800,000 members, who work everywhere from hospitals to schools to municipal services, want to be part of “Team Canada”.

“But at what cost?” he said in an interview with Al Jazeera.

A fight over the right to strike

The controversy centres on Section 107 of the Canada Labour Code, which already gives the Labour Minister broad powers to step into disputes if needed to maintain “industrial peace”, end work stoppages and force the two sides into a binding arbitration.

Beginning in 2024, Ottawa used the provision eight times to intervene in disputes involving airlines, Canada’s two largest railways, three major ports and Canada Post and again during the Air Canada dispute in 2025 when flight attendants went on strike.

Unions have challenged the use of that law in court and had hoped the proposed C-39 would restrict, if not repeal, that clause while businesses wanted it strengthened.

The bill does neither. Instead, it introduces two conditions that the government would have to fulfil first before turning to Section 107.

Before stepping in, the government would have to appoint a special mediator, wait for a public report and consider whether a work stoppage is hurting the “national interest”.

Once a strike or lockout is underway, the minister could direct the Canada Industrial Relations Board to get operations running again and impose a binding process, such as arbitration.

The government says those steps put clearer guardrails around a power that already exists, and Carney has said the bill “absolutely reinforces the right to strike”, according to the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.

Unions have rejected this defence, pointing out that the meaning of “national interest” would ultimately be decided by the minister. They also argue that the prospect of government intervention is bound to change what happens at the bargaining table.

“The political lesson that employers will draw from it is simple,” Larry Savage, a professor of labour studies at Brock University, told Al Jazeera. “Hold out long enough, emphasise the economic damage, and then Ottawa will remove the union’s leverage for you.”

Disruption, Savage said, is precisely what gives a strike its power. “Every effective strike is disruptive,” he said.

Unions say they have already seen employers expect Ottawa to intervene.

Teamsters Canada alleges the Canadian National Railway (CN) and the Canadian Pacific Kansas City (CPKC) railroad companies were counting on Ottawa to step in when they locked out thousands of workers in 2024. Section 107 was invoked within hours.

“Companies have gotten used to the idea that if there is a labour dispute, they can just wait for the government to intervene,” Christopher Monette, Teamsters Canada’s director of public affairs, told Al Jazeera.

CUPE said it saw a similar dynamic at Air Canada in August 2025. Hancock said bargaining stalled after more than 10,000 Air Canada flight attendants voted overwhelmingly to strike because the airline was “expecting the government of Canada to step in and end the strike” — an account Air Canada disputed.

Less than 12 hours after workers walked out, Ottawa invoked Section 107. Air Canada CEO Michael Rousseau later told BNN Bloomberg the airline had expected the provision to be enforced and did not expect a strike.

“That was why they didn’t have a strategy on how to deal with the strike,” Hancock said.

Building Canada faster

The fight over the right to strike is also part of a much bigger argument taking shape around Carney’s economic agenda: Who gets a say in how Canada should change, and how quickly, in the name of making itself less vulnerable to the US?

Critics accuse Carney of using the economic threat from the US to push through changes that go well beyond responding to Trump’s trade war.

New Democratic Party leader Avi Lewis has accused him of using the “fear and disorientation around the trade war to push through a series of unpopular measures that he did not run on, has no mandate for and would never get away with under normal circumstances”.

That tension was on display in Toronto just a week before C-39 was introduced. Inside Canada’s first national investment summit, hundreds of global investors met with government officials and executives as Carney pitched a country ready to build.

Outside, hundreds of protesters marched through downtown towards the summit’s opening gala under the banner “The Many vs The Money”. The rally brought together labour, Indigenous, environmental and migrant-rights groups, with signs and speeches taking aim at everything from fossil fuel and military projects to AI and the use of public money to attract private investment.

For unions, C-39 has sharpened that debate, pitting the government’s promise of greater certainty for investors against workers’ ability to exert pressure through strikes.

But Jim Stanford, an economist and director of the Vancouver-based Centre for Future Work, questions how much of an economic threat strikes actually pose.

While work stoppages can be costly for individual companies, Stanford said, “It is very, very rare that you would see a noticeable and sustained impact on GDP, employment or incomes.”

Production and transportation are often delayed rather than permanently lost, he added, with businesses catching up once work resumes.

Stanford also questioned the idea that strikes are driving away investment, noting that more than 95 percent of collective bargaining ends without a work stoppage and saying there is “no empirical evidence whatsoever” that strikes have reduced investment.

“This is more of the government giving some icing on the cake for business. It’s not that this has to happen or else our investment won’t work,” he said.

There is also an economic cost to weakening the right to strike, Stanford argued. Workers need bargaining power to win higher wages, which can support consumer spending, productivity and worker retention.

“It may seem like labour peace is a good thing, but if it means that a worker’s share of the pie shrinks, then this actually hurts the economy.”

For labour leaders, that’s where Carney’s economic push goes too far.

“Canada’s unions are part of Team Canada. We have our elbows up,” Canadian Labour Congress President Bea Bruske said in a statement. “But we can’t have our elbows up against Trump with our hands tied at the bargaining table.”

Savage said the government’s “Team Canada” rhetoric risks treating workers’ bargaining power as a national liability.

“I don’t think Canada becomes stronger by telling workers in ports or railways or airlines that their rights have to be surrendered whenever employers invoke competitiveness or the national interest,” he said.

Smit Machchhar recalls mid-air disaster after co-pilot’s attack on flydubai flight to Tel Aviv.

Indian pilot Smit Machchhar, who was stabbed by his co-pilot in an alleged attempt to crash a Flydubai flight to Tel Aviv, has shared a public account of how he managed to open the cockpit door and let passengers take control of the plane despite his injuries.

Speaking on Friday from a hospital bed in Abu Dhabi via video call with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Machchhar said that he knew the aircraft was going down as he lay bleeding on the floor.

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“I had suffered so many injuries that I had collapsed. At that time, I could feel that the aircraft was going down. I knew this was the last push, that the door was right there,” he said in a nearly 10-minute video released on the prime minister’s social media channels.

He added: “I was being hit even then, but I just opened the door and everyone came in.”

Machchhar, who has 17 years of aviation experience, including 11 as a captain, said that experience helped him grasp what was happening even while wounded.

He told Modi he had recited a Hindu devotional prayer during the ordeal.

“I know God himself saved me,” he said, in an emotional exchange with Modi, who is from the same home state of Gujarat.

Modi praised Machchhar’s bravery, saying his presence of mind had saved lives and the reputation of Indian pilots.

Machchhar said he allowed passengers and crew to overpower the co-pilot and let a second pair of Flydubai pilots take control and land the plane in Tabuk, Saudi Arabia.

The Flydubai flight was carrying 174 people as it briefly plunged around 17,000 feet (5,180 metres) before it was brought back under control.

UAE presidential adviser Anwar Gargash has called the incident a “terrorist act”, while Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the co-pilot had undergone “Islamist radical indoctrination” and appeared “suicidal”.

US President Donald Trump has warned that Iran would be “hit very hard” if found to be linked to the attack.

The United Arab Emirates has said it will launch an investigation into the incident.