Slovenia becomes first EU country to introduce fuel rationing

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c77m4zx6zvmo

by measurablefunc • 4 months ago

194 348 4 months ago

mlinhares• 4 months ago

Hope that gets Europe to invest in renewables and leave oil behind.

rwyinuse• 4 months ago

I agree. Ironically ones complaining the loudest about fuel prices are be far-right populists, who tend to be against renewables.

callamdelaney3• 4 months ago

Yeah as if Europe doesn't have Oil it isn't exploiting because of renewable legislation..

argsnd• 4 months ago

Europe simply does not have enough known oil reserves to put a dent in current prices even if it exploited them all.

There may still be good arguments to do so anyway, such as it being less carbon intensive than importing oil, but there is absolutely no magic lever we can pull that would fix this problem that we're just not pulling due to renewables legislation.

varispeed• 4 months ago

How do you put renewables into the petrol tank?

kypro• 4 months ago

Hasn't Germany and the UK been investing in renewables for years now? They must be feeling pretty happy about that decision right now unlike oil obsessed countries like the US.

rwmj• 4 months ago

For electricity generation, the UK is currently generating 50% via renewables. It goes up and down each day of course, storage is not a solved problem yet.

Nice visualisations of the current status: https://grid.iamkate.com/

Electricity is only a part of the whole energy sector, but it's relevant to this thread about EVs.

zejn6• 4 months ago

Yes, but it is not enough. It helps a lot when sunny, and weekend mid-day gross market prices for electricity hover just above zero, but there's not enough batteries, flexibility, and other renewables to avoid price spikes in the morning and evening peak, when hydro and gas plants are still covering a lot.

ZeroGravitas4• 4 months ago

Partly, though both have had periods of right wing governments trying to make this problem worse to benefit their oil and gas industry backers.

And now the same people are saying that the answer is more oil and gas.

tialaramex3• 4 months ago

A quarter of a century ago, the first quarter of 2001, Britain used 39 TWh of coal electrical generation, 36 TWh of gas and 21 TWh of nuclear.

Today we're lot more energy efficient†, and the renewables made more than 25 TWh, but nuclear is now less than 10 TWh, we of course no longer burn coal, which leaves 30 TWh of gas still and we have a lot more imports (because we have a lot more interconnect, which is also a form of energy security)

† For example back then we mostly used incandescent light bulbs! And a lot of people still used CRT televisions back then!

gib4446• 4 months ago

If so they must have very low domestic electricity prices (according to many people who continue to claim renewables = lower prices!)

Oh, wait, they don't. At all

drnick1• 4 months ago

Electric cars aren't cheap, and electricity prices are very high in Europe.

toomuchtodo8• 4 months ago

BYD EVs are affordable. Electricity will get cheaper with more renewables, oil will not.

zejn6• 4 months ago

Not true. No new car is cheap, and electricity is now cheaper than gas or diesel.

b65e8bee43c2ed02• 4 months ago

Europe has no (meaningful amounts of economically viable to extract) lithium either.

philipkglass• 4 months ago

"Lithium mining commences in Finland"

https://www.electrive.com/2026/02/12/lithium-mining-commence...

This week, the first spodumene vein was blasted from the rock at the open-pit mine in western Finland, marking the occasion with a ceremonial event attended by invited guests and media.

helsinkiandrew2• 4 months ago

Europe has massive lithium reserves in Germany, Serbia, Portugal and ukraine but perhaps more importantly it also has friendly relations with other countries with reserves

MattGaiser3• 4 months ago

Eh, the war in Ukraine has kind of proven that the Europeans are not all that capable of action. There has been an enormous incentive to have been getting rid of oil dependency for 4 years now.

zejn6• 4 months ago

The problem with getting rid of oil is that cars currently in use will be usable even when over 20 years old, replacing them with EVs is expensive, and the good enough and economically accessible EVs are only now starting to get to market.

It's really hard to quickly replace millions of vehicles.

lostlogin8• 4 months ago

the war in Ukraine has kind of proven that the Europeans are not all that capable of action.

It’s revealed a fair bit about America too. And this oil crisis is a fairly incredible screw up too. What did the US think would happen?

leonidasrup10• 4 months ago

Germany has switched from one gas supplier to different gas suppliers.

The past Vice-Chancellor Robert Habeck famously once sad: “Nuclear power doesn’t help us there at all,” “We have a heating problem or an industry problem, but not an electricity problem – at least not generally throughout the country.”

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/7/12/german-says-nuclear...

leonidasrup10• 4 months ago

Europe would be better served by doing, what France did in 1974.

"As a direct result of the 1973 oil crisis, on 6 March 1974 Prime Minister Pierre Messmer announced what became known as the 'Messmer Plan', a hugely ambitious nuclear power program aimed at generating most of France's electricity from nuclear power. At the time of the oil crisis most of France's electricity came from foreign oil. "

"Work on the first three plants, at Tricastin, Gravelines, and Dampierre, started the same year and France installed 56 reactors over the next 15 years."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_France#Messme...

mono4424• 4 months ago

The way the EU forces the electricity market to operate makes them completely unprofitable. Renewables are always given priority in the market, which results in other power plants operating at a capacity factor of 30-40%. Since nuclear power plants are mostly capital expenditure-intensive, this makes the electricity they produce absurdly expensive.

ZeroGravitas4• 4 months ago

Sounds like a good plan unless we've invented 2 much cheaper and faster to deploy methods to generate electricity.

tialaramex3• 4 months ago

Europe would be better served by doing, what France did in 1974.

This is 2026. Doing things in 1974 isn't an option because time's arrow points the wrong way.

If you want Europe to do things now that it should have done in 1974 you'd need to explain how it'll stall on all the consequences for years. France, which you held up as a model says it can build a nuclear generator in about 5-6 years, but none of these optimistic projections came true this century, more typically the plant takes 10-15 years and it can be more.

So, suppose they start today likely they'll say the generator goes online in 2032. How does that help with the crisis Trump caused this month ? Worse, come 2032 the date is likely to be 2040 instead.

Now, renewables go a lot faster. For solar it's genuinely possible to get paperwork done in January and be selling electricity made with those panels by summer. It's not easy, plenty of projects will be delayed out a 1-2 years, particularly if local government don't want the project, but with a following wind it can really be the same year. Wind is slower, but still you will almost certainly build it and switch it on in five years, the optimistic guess France never hits for its nuclear plants.

testing22321• 4 months ago

In 20 years we’ll have one plant for $20 billion that generates electricity that is vastly more expensive than solar.

No, that is a terrible idea.

ajsnigrutin8• 4 months ago

The local farmers came with 1000l+ tanks for diesel, foreigners with multiple gas cans, etc., and the local logistics couldn't handle the pressure.

hirako20002• 4 months ago

Could also be that they didn't have sufficient reserve and would rather blame hijackers?

ajsnigrutin8• 4 months ago

They're blaming the lack of cisterns to transport gas from storage to individual gas stations, because everyone went to get gas, and some hoarded a lot of it

example: https://www.zurnal24.si/slovenija/bralec-v-soku-mirne-vesti-...

I mean... we also have a huge factory making toilet paper here, and we had the same toilet paper crisis during covid... everyone suddenly needed 10 packs of toilet paper for some reason.

margalabargala4• 4 months ago

Foreigners were coming to Slovenia just to buy gas? In such quantities that it strained infrastructure?

That definitely sounds like something that happened.

As if "multiple gas cans" wouldn't still be well under the 50 liter/day limit.

edgarvaldes• 4 months ago

No numbers provided, but from TFA:

In Slovenia, this has resulted in so-called "fuel tourism", as drivers from neighbouring countries, particularly Austria, take advantage of the lower, regulated prices here.

Detrytus• 4 months ago

Well, Slovenia is a small country and has land borders with many others. Imagine that gas in New Jersey was $1 per gallon cheaper than in New York and Pennsylvania. I guess a lot of people would drive to NJ gas stations.

ajsnigrutin8• 4 months ago

Yes, mostly italians and austrians

https://svet24.si/novice/slovenija/gorivo-dizel-bencinski-se...

https://sobotainfo.com/novica/lokalno/foto-video-neverjetna-...

https://sobotainfo.com/novica/globalno/video-avstrijci-k-nam...

https://www.prlekija-on.net/lokalno/40253/ponekod-zmanjkalo-...

And it's not the first time:

https://vecer.com/slovenija/izredne-razmere-zaradi-navala-na...

iammjm• 4 months ago

Slovenia is a small country with 2 million people, bordering countries with a total of over 82 million people. The neighbors are also relatively rich countries, such as Austria and Italy

throwawaytea7• 4 months ago

My family with 3 people, two dirt bikes, and a gas generator for camping owns four 5 gallon gas cans. So I alone without trying can fit 80L without even filling up my car.

selimthegrim• 4 months ago

Did they not have rationing based on odd/even number plates in 1980s?

amarcheschi• 4 months ago

Also

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/slovakia-die...

bhokbah• 4 months ago

50 liters per day...

TacticalCoder• 4 months ago

Those limits also do exists somehow in other countries. In France for example it's been a very long time some petrol station say "150 EUR maximum". People are going to say it's not a "real" limit but I did hit it once or twice while going on vacation: 80 liters tank, near empty / car only taking 98 octane fuel (more expensive than 95) / ultra-pricey fuel at petrol stations on the highway (so pricey it's usually cheaper to just get off the highway, fill the tank in a village, and go back to the highway).

At 2.2 EUR / liter, 75 liters is 165 EUR so I was blocked at 150 EUR.

50 liters I definitely cannot fill my car entirely.

kpil2• 4 months ago

The 150€ is a reservation on your debit card before filling up, since the banks or the station doesn't want the credit risk. It's released when the actual sum is booked.

I think it's just what a reasonable "full tank" was a while back.

You can just restart if you need more.

reader9274• 4 months ago

Ah yes, shared fuel resources controlled by the government. Sociafluel

gpm4• 4 months ago

So... why is fuel 25% cheaper in Slovenia than in the neighbouring country while Solvenia is simultaneously having issues with running out of fuel?

Seems like the obvious solution is to raise prices so people stop driving to your country (wasting fuel, ironically) to take your cheap fuel instead of just paying for the fuel in their own country. More than that it's a solution the free market would actually find on its own...

trinix9126• 4 months ago

We can barely afford it at the current price. The solution would be charging foreign transit the non-regulated price but that would be considered discriminatory.

jopsen5• 4 months ago

Subsidizing gas is an expensive temporary bandaid solution.

Higher prices will drive EV adoption and busses.

In the EU, EVs or public transit is the only long term solutions we have.

SirHumphrey• 4 months ago

There was an election recently and it’s possible there will soon be another… That’s why the fuel is so cheap.

zejn6• 4 months ago

It's not a free market. Off-highway prices are regulated and were adjusted by the executive govt branch on biweekly basis, now switched to weekly. Slovenia is small and "gas tourism" is common since fossil juices in neighboring countries are priced higher.

Why not raise the prices? Sure, but then don't complain about the inflation, revolt, and stoning of elected representatives.

brendoelfrendo3• 4 months ago

This BBC article does a really poor job of explaining the context of this situation or why fuel would be so much cheaper in Slovenia, so I had to look around. Slovenia apparently introduced fuel price regulations last year (for motorway service stations; off-motorway stations have been regulated for longer), as a means of reducing costs for consumers[0]. These price caps were, in fact, removed a week ago[1], and prices at some stations rose considerably in the aftermath, closer to the Austrian prices across the border.[2] I won't speak to the wisdom of the Slovenian government in trying to cap fuel prices, but however well-intentioned the policy was, it didn't last long in the face of a global energy crunch. [0] https://sloveniatimes.com/43824/fuel-price-regulation-expand... [1] https://www.brusselstimes.com/2037901/slovenia-imposes-fuel-... [2] https://sloveniatimes.com/47009/prices-at-the-pump-up-substa...

trinix9126• 4 months ago

One thing you have to keep in mind is that in Slovenia, your employer is required to cover your commuting expenses. If there’s no viable public transit option (which is the case for most of Slovenia outside of bigger cities), they have to pay you for gas per km.

So if the regulations were to suddenly be lifted, this would have a domino effect on not only truckers but also regular commuters, which would then mean companies would have to compensate for the increased labour costs by raising the prices of their products/services even more.

tomp2• 4 months ago

In Slovenia, fuel prices have been regulated since, like, forever.

A few years ago (or last year? not sure) they were deregulated on the highways (i.e. to make tourists pay more) but then the government changed their mind (several times, IIRC).

msteffen• 4 months ago

Price increases tend to be regressive—the poor person who needs a little fuel to get to their job is hurt more than the large business that uses a lot more fuel but has much, much more money overall.

There are things you can do to try and even things out. Etherium has been considering “quadratic voting” to solve a similar problem (in this case, that would look like tracking consumption and increasing the unit price of fuel as you consume more fuel, so that cost goes up quadratically with consumption). That seems hard to enforce, though, and doesn’t help with foreign opportunists.

gpm4• 4 months ago

I'm totally ignorant as to Slovenia, but as a general comment on taxation regressive price increases/externality taxes/sin taxes are easily made up for by simply giving everyone a fixed sum of money (that can either be gathered specifically through the regressive tax or just through the normal non-regressive tax pool).

Ethereum has the weird issue where "votes" and "money" are different things and they only want to redistribute votes and not money, but that's not a problem here...

seydor• 4 months ago

its usually differences in taxation, they vary a lot across europe

ajsnigrutin8• 4 months ago

Fuel prices are regulated here, and we had an election right now and a huge gas price hike would be bad for the current government (not decided yet if they stay or go). The government basically lowered the gas tax for a bit to keep prices stable (they also raised the gas taxes during covid to keep the prices "stable").

The prices will go up soon, that's why everyone is panicking and filling up canisters of gas.

SirensOfTitan3• 4 months ago

Scanning some of the early comments here, and acting as-if the oil and LNG disruptions is just a question of renewable investment is naive.

This is the worst energy crisis in modern history, and little of the western world has really started feeling the effects yet:

https://thedispatch.com/newsletter/dispatch-energy/iran-war-...

Petro is pretty much upstream of everything: plastics, fertilizers, pharmaceuticals, cooking oils, lubricants, cosmetics. Dow chemical just doubled the cost of polyethylene as of April 1st. Taiwan relies on LNG for 40% of its energy production and has 11 days of LNG storage--meaning it may have to consider limiting industrial electricity use if things persist. I will clarify based on a reply, this doesn't mean they'll run out in that time, but that they have limited runway that will have deleterious effects as time goes on:

Yeh Tsung-kuang, a professor in the Department of Engineering and System Science at National Tsing Hua University, said Taiwan's maximum LNG inventory is only 11 days but that does not mean the island will run out of fuel or face outages within that time period.

Even if the Strait saw normal traffic today (and Iran is incentivized and well-positioned to keep it closed for a while), it would take quite a while to recover lost supply. Iran continues to employ a tit-for-tat strategy and Israel just targeted steel industry in the country -- I'm not even taking into account more deliberate damage to energy infrastructure in the Mid east.

This is a scary crisis wherein the most movable actor (the US) is not going to accept Iran's terms. It could collapse the global economy, and that crucially includes the AI industry this forum loves to focus on almost exclusively. The US and the majority of the west has essentially no fiscal room compared to the comparably lesser 1970s crises either. This could easily spiral out of control and cause a level of suffering across the world (esp the global south) most of us on this forum have not lived to see.

MattGaiser3• 4 months ago

Petro is pretty much upstream of everything: plastics, fertilizers, pharmaceuticals, cooking oils, lubricants, cosmetics. Dow chemical just doubled the cost of polyethylene as of April 1st. Taiwan relies on LNG for 40% of its energy production and has like 10 days of fuel left--semis are implicated.

This is, on the high end, 20% of the use of fossil fuels. We overwhelmingly burn oil and gas. If we displaced the burning, Hormuz would not matter (or would minimally matter for a few molecules) and the world would be awash in abundant supplies.

Renewable investment would solve/would have prevented this crisis.

mono4424• 4 months ago

You can't provide heating in winter using renewables.

irishcoffee2• 4 months ago

You’re choosing willful ignorance if you think petrochemicals will be replaced by renewables in your lifetime.

It isn’t going to happen. Planes don’t run on solar. Boats don’t run on renewables. The lubricant needed for wind turbines comes out of the earth. Dams need the same lubricant. Building roads, oil. Installing renewable infrastructure, oil. Running combines to harvest vegetation, oil. Building renewables requires massive amounts of oil.

Renewables are amazing and I’m all for them. Let’s keep that train rolling.

Oil isn’t going away, pretending otherwise is willful ignorance.

OgsyedIE2• 4 months ago

You could visit an alternate timeline where you have as much renewable investment into energy as you'd like going back decades and while it would help with the fertiliser situation massively it wouldn't solve the problem of needing a supply of carbon atoms to make the carbon-based substances in the list.

You can't make insulin, brake fluid or PVC out of electricity alone.

baxtr2• 4 months ago

Hormuz might not matter that much in the future since Saudi and the other countries will build even more pipelines and ports which are on the other side. Short-term is dire though.

skybrian• 4 months ago

Before calling it "the worst", I'd like more detail on how to do the comparison with the oil crises of the 1970's. My guess is that modern economies might be somewhat less oil-dependent than they were then, because the alternatives are more developed.

UncleOxidant6• 4 months ago

They are more developed, sure, and the US (from a US centric view) is producing a lot of oil now. However, consider that pretty much all of the goods you see in the supermarket got there via diesel (trains, semi-trucks). The percentage of semi-trucks operating on electricity is still miniscule at this point. Air transport? All petroleum. Consider also other things like fertilizers - we're heavily dependent on nitrogen fertilizers derived from petroleum and planting season in the northern hemisphere is starting right about now. Yes we're producing a lot more electricity with renewables, but demand is also up.

reaperducer• 4 months ago

Before calling it "the worst", I'd like more detail on how to do the comparison with the oil crises of the 1970's.

There's a graph in today's (March 28/29) Wall Street Journal that does exactly that, and shows that what's happening now is both currently slightly worse than the 1970's, and the worst oil shock in history.

And remember that this isn't over yet.

jddj• 4 months ago

How many days' fuel does Taiwan keep in reserve outside of this type of situation?

thrownawaysz• 4 months ago

This could easily spiral out of control and cause a level of suffering across the world (esp the global south) most of us on this forum have not lived to see.

Daily anxiety attack thanks. As a european I think we are way too vulnerable. Countries divided, rich getting richer, more and more poor people who can barely afford food, and that's in Europe let alone talk about what happens with the poor in Africa and Asia.

Sooner or later we will need a global reset but that sounds worse than everything else

kpil2• 4 months ago

We don't "need a global reset"

It's an apocalyptical mind-bug. All times have an eschatology - ours seems to be climate collapse. It used to be nuclear war.

The media is selling a story. In reality everything is still getting better. People are healthier, richer, and better off in almost every measurable way, all over the world, including Africa and Asia.

Yes, there are some dark clouds. A long list. But the problems - even a long war in the middle east, are bumps in the road, not a cliff. If the clouds turns out to be a really bad storm, people will buckle down and sort it.

t0bia_s2• 4 months ago

Just look how you react on news. Those stories are here for purpose. To frightens mind that is easy to manipulate with and accept all kind of fatalistic scenarios. At the end you will just paying more for less.

JuniperMesos• 4 months ago

How is a global reset going to solve the problem of not enough oil getting exported out of Arabian Gulf oil fields to provide energy to the rest of the world?

011000112• 4 months ago

On the plus side, Trump is helping Europe and Asia meet their climate goals.

I hear diesel is running out in NSW and Queensland Australia. Good thing you don't need diesel to run mining operations. Oh wait..

WastedCucumber2• 4 months ago

I was just talking to a kiwi yesterday about diesel. The price has more than doubled already there. So there goes large chunk of the US beef supply.

tpm6• 4 months ago

Mining companies have started to invest into EV mining trucks, guess that will be even more popular now.

codethief• 4 months ago

Taiwan relies on LNG for 40% of its energy production and has like 10 days of fuel left--semis are implicated.

The "10 days left" thing seems to be a hoax(?)

https://www.msn.com/en-us/politics/international-relations/m...

https://www.malaymail.com/news/world/2026/03/26/is-taiwan-ru...

SirensOfTitan3• 4 months ago

Oh I'm sorry, that was actually my mistake, I should have been much more specific, and I will update the comment if I still can. My intention was to emphasize that Taiwan may have to start limiting electricity to its industrial sector based on its current runway. Per the article you listed:

Yeh Tsung-kuang, a professor in the Department of Engineering and System Science at National Tsing Hua University, said Taiwan's maximum LNG inventory is only 11 days but that does not mean the island will run out of fuel or face outages within that time period

EDIT: updated comment to be more specific.

UncleOxidant6• 4 months ago

Yeh Tsung-kuang, a professor in the Department of Engineering and System Science at National Tsing Hua University, said Taiwan's maximum LNG inventory is only 11 days but that does not mean the island will run out of fuel or face outages within that time period

So he's saying they've got an 11 day supply and that they won't face any shortages during that 11 days... but what about after 11 days? I guess I'm not sure how that's different, how it's a hoax?

throwawaytea7• 4 months ago

I have 30 days of food in my house and I have maintained that since probably 2021. It doesn't mean I will run out in 30 days, since I can still buy food although at higher prices lately. I personally never let it dip below 20 probably.

baxtr2• 4 months ago

If the price of the blockade is as high as you outline, the price to secure the strait military might look comparatively lower.

And, looking at the scenario you’re describing, it could be the most sane thing to do at this point.

0cf8612b2e1e3• 4 months ago

It is asymmetrical warfare. A hundred plus ships went through the straight daily. Attackers only need to occasionally damage a ship to make the crossing look deeply unappealing. No military intervention can promise 100% defense to passing vessels.

SirensOfTitan3• 4 months ago

The problem is that Iran can defend the strait against the world's most advanced military with drones built with commercial hardware for 30-50K per drone. And that doesn't even take into account escalation, as if the US escalates then Iran will likely start targeting critical infrastructure in the region, making the crisis worse.

The US and Israel are rapidly running out of munitions, while Iran is being resupplied by Russia (https://www.ft.com/content/d5d7291b-8a53-42cd-b10a-4e02fbcf9...) which is much more tooled out for munition production compared to NATO. The US also relies on both rare earths and Chinese supply chain for a lot of its munitions (which it is running low on).

IMO the best option is for Trump to TACO, take the major L, and cede Iran its demands, but this would partially mean an alignment shift from Israel which still feels unthinkable based on the US political realities.

vkou2• 4 months ago

the price to secure the straight military might look comparatively lower.

The price to secure the straight militarily is a full ground invasion of Iran.

This would be done against a country four times bigger (in population and size) than Iraq, with the kind of terrain that makes Afghanistan look easily accessible, done without the help of a coalition of fools, because this isn't 2003, and nobody in Europe is very eager to send their kids to die for a war that Trump's ego started. His 2025 attempts to 'ingrate' himself with Europe are paying dividends now.

Also, if you think the war is unpopular now (nobody but the 40% of the country that's MAGA-brained supports it - and those guys will support anything), imagine what the popularity would be like with a full mobilization and invasion.

The GOPniks aren't that eager to become a 31-seat party this November.

holoduke• 4 months ago

The world is way too stable for a real crisis. The west is much more resilient than a lot of people think. Nothing will really change. Life will go on.

joquarky2• 4 months ago

That depends on how wealthy you are.

singleshot_4• 4 months ago

Petro is pretty much upstream of everything: plastics, fertilizers, pharmaceuticals, cooking oils,

Really! What petroleum-based oil do you cook with?

AnimalMuppet2• 4 months ago

Plant-based ones that were harvested by machines that burn petroleum.

downrightmike• 4 months ago

Electric range

michaelt• 4 months ago

A lot of people use fossil fuels in their cooking.

Just in the form of a gas, not a liquid.

Snawoot• 4 months ago

Hexane is directly used as a solvent for edible cooking oil refining.

jmyeet3• 4 months ago

Most people just don't understand what a monumental rewrite of global politics this is and (IMHO) it will go down as the worst foreign policy mistake in US history and it's not even close. Some might say "what about Vietnam?" No, this is worse, geopolitically. WhY/ Because there was never any possibility of success. The US simply doesn't have the military capability to depose the regime or open the Strait and Pentagon military planners all knew this beforehand.

The big winners are:

- China. They're already going renewable at a rapid pace. They have a massive stockpile of oil (~1.4B barrels) and they're still receiving oil from Iran. This diminishes US influence in the the world and increases China's influence;

- Russia: this crisis will probably force the West to make peace with Russia and they'll retain any current Ukrainian territory just to secure Russian energy exports, particularly natural gas;

- Iran: the sanctions are over. Prior to all this Iran was selling oil to China for below market rate, less than $50/barrel. Now? They're legally able to sell it and get market rates, which are more like ~$120/barrel. Iran may well still get a regime of charging ships to traverse the Strait after the war is over;

Who are the losers?

- Europe: this is going to massively increase energy costs for years;

- Ukraine: see above (Russia);

- The US: massively decreased influence, particularly in the Middle East;

- Israel: there will be no regime change in Iran, Iran will come out in a better position and this may well be the first crack in the US-Israel relationship because Israel dog-walked the US into this war. The Iron Dome has shown to be not as impenetrable as once thought;

- The Gulf states: they face a tough choice between remaining US client states or breaking free. Breaking free probably means their monarchies and despotic regimes will fall. The myth of the US security guarantee has been broken. These regimes will probably stick with the US for their own survival and we may see some of them fall anyway (eg Bahrain).

I agree with your main point: "just go renewable" is both naive and utterly useless advice. That's a decades-long project. Also, who makes all the solar panels (and probably windmills)? China.

It is a little different because the US is a net energy exporter now and definitely wasn't in the 1970s. Still, there will be higher prices for everything and the US can't realistically block exports to keep prices low because other countries will stop sending us stuff.

Were the president anyone else, they would be impeached and removed from office. That's how bad this is. But we live in a post-truth world the the president is the leader of a cult.

12lak-123• 4 months ago

Yes, but is it a mistake or deliberate? The Iran war has been planned since GW Bush.

Now we have a president who hates the EU and Ukraine more than he hates Russia and China and he has Greenland ambitions.

He is currently dragging out the war and Rubio was in the EU to string people along yet again.

If he drags out the war long enough, the EU might need to make concessions on certain issues.

What the EU should do but is too stupid to do: It should immediately negotiate with China and Russia to create jealousy (that is what Trump does, he understands that) and say: While you are doing your extended Iran adventure, we'll drop sanctions on Russian gas and import LNG.

That is literally the only language Trump understands and then the deep state will put him on a leash. Trump would hate nothing more than EU overtures to Putin while he is left out of the negotiations.

Sometimes you have to use all options to get things done.

oblio8• 4 months ago

Russia: this crisis will probably force the West to make peace with Russia and they'll retain any current Ukrainian territory just to secure Russian energy exports, particularly natural gas;

The West is not the only party in this war and Ukraine has shown many times that it can do its own thing. Ukraine was supposed to roll over and die in 3 days and it has just managed to liberate about 500sqkm of territory, 4 years after the start of the war. Plus: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=22xoretdhbm

weakened_malloc• 4 months ago

I agree with your main point: "just go renewable" is both naive and utterly useless advice. That's a decades-long project. Also, who makes all the solar panels (and probably windmills)? China.

This is the key point a lot of people miss, the vast majority of equipment needed to actually use renewables requires Chinese products. If you go 100% renewables, you're only replacing one form of dependence (oil) for another,

pwarner• 4 months ago

Missing in discussion is that the loss of mideastern oil is being offset by releases from strategic reserves. But those will end, creating even more shortages.

userbinator2• 4 months ago

Just Stop Oil got their wish! Now everyone else gets to suffer the effects.

platevoltage6• 4 months ago

Could you be any more bad faith?

gzread• 4 months ago

the US is not going to accept Iran's terms

There's no reason to assume it won't. It might not voluntarily but it looks a lot like it's either going to be forced to accept them, or it's going to become an irrelevant actor one way or another leaving Iran to set terms by default.

Other countries are switching to the yuan global reserve currency and petrocurrency in order to be allowed passage through Hormuz. The US has no counter to this (besides ending the war, which it won't) and with how much the US relies on these two things to be globally relevant, if this continues then oil prices will return to normal, will be traded in yuan, and there will no longer be a US. A complete own goal and possibly the fastest self destruction by unforced error in all of human history.

Europe will lag behind the trend because of its alliance with the US but it will turn eventually in order to get low oil prices. When the US attempted to force Europe to sanction Iran several years ago, Europe invented a system to evade them (INSTEX).

US bond markets have just locked up this week. The US found itself unable to borrow more money at any price - nobody wants to lend it. Banks turned off their automated trading systems because they can't work in this environment. This is a symptom of global dedollarization. While this shock may only last a few days the frequency of this sort of this sort of thing is rapidly increasing, and when a government can't borrow money any more it has no choice but to print it to pay its debts, and we know where that leads: Weimar-style hyperinflation.

genxy6• 4 months ago

Clearly the US needs to start bombing ships that switch to the yuan.

ThePowerOfFuet• 4 months ago

Petro is pretty much upstream of everything: [...] cooking oils

Wait, what?

ndsipa_pomu• 4 months ago

Petro is often used to transport cooking oils from the farmers to the retailers, so without it, cooking oil is going to be hard to source.

perching_aix• 4 months ago

50L/day - with no other limits - sounds like a lot. Are there really fuel tourists coming in en masse and taking more than this? With zero tracking of enforcement whatsoever, people will just hit up a few different nearby gas stations instead of one anyways and that's it.

throwawaytea7• 4 months ago

Hey man,sometimes you just have to drive 400 miles a day, everyday.

cucumber37328422• 4 months ago

That was me today, Thursday, Monday and last Friday though I suppose a couple of them were "only" 300 miles. I'm not normal though.

And if I gave a crap about western white collar standards for acceptable vehicle loading I'd have had to do it all twice or take a vehicle that uses twice the fuel lol.

marginalia_nu• 4 months ago

Well if you have regulated fuel prices, and free trade and travel with neighboring countries (the whole point of the EU), you're gonna see arbitrage if those countries aren't regulating fuel prices.

Options are to either un-regulate the prices, or ration the fuel sales.

jmclnx• 4 months ago

I do not understand this rationing scheme.

Say I live in Austria and it is a short ride to a Slovenia Station. Can buy as much gas as I want, but citizens in Slovenia are limited ? That does not seem right.

trinix9126• 4 months ago

No, as of now, you can’t pump more than 50L. Doesn’t matter whether you’re a citizen or not.

kolinko2• 4 months ago

No, the rules have to be the same for all EU citizens.

svilen_dobrev• 4 months ago

Bulgaria.. today.. 95 gasoline , on nearest OMV station = ~~ 1.42E/liter (more prices at [0] : 1.26-2.15E)

https://fuelo.net/cheap/where?lang=bg&order=cheap&fuel_type=...

come here, the water is fine :)

dismalaf• 4 months ago

I bet everyone around the world is glad that Canada decided virtue signalling is more important than exporting LNG and oil.

properbrew• 4 months ago

Note that this looks to have been a few days ago:

23 March 2026

lemoncookiechip• 4 months ago

If you want to see the end state of lack of oil, look no further than Cuba's current state of affairs. It's dire.

Also for the naive people in the comments who say "invest in renewables" it's not that simple. You can buy electric cars but the car's whole manufacturing process had multiple steps that required oil. The same applies to everything, it's not a single layer issues, it's a multi-layer issue that needs addressing from the ground and takes years and years with full investment. The boats, the planes require fuel. The industrial machinery requires fuel. We need to address it from the ground up and it's not an easy feat.

We should 100% invest and diversify energy production, but the reality is that even if we had a surplus of renewable energy on the grid, that wouldn't save a country because there are too many cogs that need oil right now that need replacing.

legulere2• 4 months ago

It’s not 100% of oil production capacity that is lost, but 20%. You need to cut demand by that, so electric cars can help extremely, because most oil is consumed during car use, not production.

saulpw• 4 months ago

They were saying, if you want to see the end state of lack of oil. Like how would it look if your oil spigot were turned off? A lot of people haven't thought about it.

tsoukase• 4 months ago

Slovenia is 165km wide and 265km long so with 50lit gas tank your are out of the country. It's only the same day back and forth that is limited by this measure. It probably has nothing to do with energy saving or renewable push.

gib4446• 4 months ago

This is just like COVID where countries watch other countries react and just go "huh would you look at that" and go back to their lunch.

In the UK there is currently a feels like temperature of -8C (early morning) and yesterday reached a dizzying high of 4c. Spring is stubbornly in hiding still.

The inflationary crisis will be immense as it's building off the previous one which didn't really go away

wtmt• 4 months ago

Meanwhile in India, people are queuing up to get LPG cylinders (cooking gas) and the government is making similar statements as quoted in this article that there are no shortages.

Pump prices of petrol and diesel in India are being kept the same by reducing taxes since there are some key state elections next month and the ruling party of the union government doesn’t want to hurt its chances.

Expect fuel prices in India to go up in May and the following months, even though procurement from Russia is increasing.

With a fertilizer shortage, the consequences of this war are making things tougher and tougher for common people everywhere.

xinayder• 4 months ago

Er, Hungary had implemented this back in 2022/23 when the Ukraine war started. The title makes it look like it's the very first country to restrict how much fuel you can buy in one go.

Slovenia becomes first EU country to introduce fuel rationing

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