French finance minister says further oil-reserve releases not yet under discussion

PARIS, March 18 (Reuters) - France is "not there yet" on any move to release more oil from strategic reserves, Finance Minister Roland Lescure said on Wednesday, underscoring that restoring flows through the Strait of Hormuz remains the only lasting way to ease the market.

"Well, we're not there yet," Lescure said in an interview with CNBC. "At the end of the day, we know that the only way of liberating the oil market is to have the Strait of Hormuz flow some oil."

"You can't replace flows by stocks, you know - this is a one-off. I mean, we could do more, we have more. But what we wanted to do is show a signal to the market," Lescure added.

• The International Energy Agency announced earlier this month that its 32 member countries had agreed to release 400 million barrels of oil from strategic stockpiles to combat a surge in global crude prices since the start of the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran. The United States is expected to contribute the bulk of supply
  

• The release was expected to cover about 20 days of supply lost to disruptions in the Strait of Hormuz, through which a fifth of global oil and gas supply usually moves daily
  

• IEA's chief Fatih Birol has said its member countries could release more oil into the market "as and if needed" to deal with what it has called the biggest oil supply disruption in history