A jump-start to the weak economy, rather than an easing of any energy crisis is behind the decision by the United States and European nations to release 60 million barrels of oil from their strategic petroleum stocks, says an oil analyst seen as one of the fathers of the idea of emergency oil reserves.

“Now we know what QE3 looks like,” said Lawrence Goldstein, a director of the Washington, D.C.-based Energy Policy Research Foundation, referring to the term economists recently have been using to speculate about the possibility of governments launching a third round of economic stimulus funding—”Quantitative Easing 3.”

“They have no serious ammunition left” to launch another round of economic stimulus, Goldstein said, “so they’ve fallen back on the oil