Investing.com -- France is not prepared to release additional oil from its strategic reserves at this time, Finance Minister Roland Lescure said on Wednesday, emphasizing that reopening the Strait of Hormuz is the only sustainable solution to ease market pressures.

"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."

Lescure explained that strategic reserves cannot substitute for regular supply flows. "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.

Earlier this month, the International Energy Agency announced that its 32 member countries agreed to release 400 million barrels of oil from strategic stockpiles to address 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 majority of the 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 typically moves daily.

IEA chief Fatih Birol has said its member countries could release more oil into the market as needed to deal with what the agency has called the biggest oil supply disruption in history.