Sainsbury’s (SBRY.L) cranked up the pressure in the petrol pump price war yesterday, with a promotion offering 10p off of every litre of fuel when shopping in store.

The move by the retail giant comes just hours after archrivals Tesco and Asda snipped 3 pence off of a litre of petrol and diesel after the release of emergency reserves by the International Energy Agency (IEA) on Friday.

Morrisons also responded within 24 hours of the announcement prompting analysts to predict similar moves by BP and Shell.

Today’s news of Sainsbury’s promotion comes three days after the first cuts when the IEA confirmed it was releasing 60 million barrels of government held oil stocks within the coming month.

The organisation has only ever done this three times before in the IEA’s 27 years since establishment.

Chris Huhne, Energy and Climate Change secretary, said the coordinated global action by the IEA illustrated that producer and consumer nations could still take decisive steps to ensure enough oil is available.

He explained, ‘We strongly welcome Saudi Energy Minister al-Naimi's statement earlier this month that Saudi Arabia and other Gulf countries will increase oil production to supply whatever the market needs.’

Violence in Libya and Yemen has disrupted the global supply of oil, and there has been a loss of Libyan production, which is scheduled to continue for some time yet.