First, as The Economist notes, the global energy system is not adjusting smoothly through price signals, as orthodox economic models suggest it should. Instead, market demand is being propped up by policy intervention, most especially through short-term inventory depletion. Politicians are maintaining the pretence that all is “normal”.
So, as Spud doesn’t go on to say, don’t use politics and politicians to fuck up market responses.
The reality is we need fuel rationing, and we need it now.
So, let’s fuck up markets and market pricing with politics and politicians.
For Oz, the fuel shortage has been caused by policy intervention in favour of windmills and solar panels. And naturally plenty of cash subsidies.
We of course need to rebuild our refineries and drill for the oil needed to keep them going. But we’ll inevitably build more and more windmills instead, and dump all the industries that need lots and lots of reliable energy overseas.
He’s desperate for it isn’t he? I bet he imagines it will be him stamping the permits.
To gauge how close the world is to energy catastrophe, The Economist has gathered a dashboard of indicators. It suggests that grave damage has already been done. Worse, without a reopening costs could soar, triggering events that cause the fuel system to seize up. A reopening of the strait now would—just—avoid a complete disaster. But some additional pain is already inevitable.
Three factors are pushing the world towards the cliff edge. Oil cargoes available to buy are drying up. Refineries are slashing output of fuel. And demand remains artificially high, especially in Europe. Something big must give somewhere large for energy markets to balance.
What a shame. Should probably have thought of that before making it illegal/prohibitively expensive to produce hydrocarbons or generate electricity? Oh well.
And demand remains artificially high
Does he explain what he means by that?
It’s a quote from The Economist, apparently they’re referring to “oil price caps and subsidies” in the EU, but damned if I can find out where – Google Search doesn’t work anymore and all its AI thing wants to tell you about is the purported cap on the price of Russian oil.
You might think that, after kicking themselves in the balls by severing Europe from Russian hydrocarbons, European countries would have used the intervening 4 years to make sure they were less exposed to happenings in the notoriously volatile Middle East. But of course they did nothing except spaff more money on windmills.
And now they’re proposing to… spaff more money on windmills. Like a doctor wondering why his patients keep dying after he administers a claw hammer to the temple. Could it be the far right who are to blame?
Steve
You KNOW, candidly, that the Far Right is always to blame…
Well, to be fair, when some Europeans came looking for reliable hydrocarbons the lackwit they talked to haughtily dismissed them, saying ‘there is no business case’ for exporting LNG to Europe. He did offer to sell them liquid hydrogen – starting 10-15 years out, and produced with moonbeams.
Moral of the story: ALL politicians are gormless dickwads on energy policy.
If “ALL politicians are gormless dickwads on energy policy”, what do we do? Or did you mean ‘all current politicians’?
Certainly, all politicians currently in power, Theo. I vote based on whether the candidate / party has a coherent energy policy – it’s a field where I am competent to judge. Most don’t, I have to admit.
Some Eastern European countries have introduced price caps or cut fuel duty to keep pump prices lower: Poland, Hungary, Czech Republic and Slovakia for example. So not a huge chunk of global demand.
I believe Austria is going to dosdid as well. They even have oil underground available.
It’s hilarious to read the same people demanding a ‘low carbon’ future getting their panties soiled over the price of oil spiking and the sinking of tons of high-carbon industries.
They should be praising Trump for making the Net Zero future possible now;).
At the very least is says something about why the “let’s just give up fossil fuels within the next year” crew are totally barmy. Though the Just Stop Oil protestors honestly seemed to believe it and that the only reason we persisted in using it was that our governments had all been captured by fossil fuel interests. Unfortunately they’re the thin end of the wedge of the “let’s simply give up fossil fuels within ten years” people. Who are using the current mess as an indication we need to move faster towards net zero rather than a sign of how hard it will be to do so.
Brent Crude, light, sweet and perfect for petrol and diesel. And aviation spirit (Kerosene).
When I worked as a rail guard we used to take 1.4 million litres of aviation spirit every weekday from the refinery at Coryton to Langley to supply Heathrow. The oil is still in the North Sea but the refineries (and all the other chemical plants on the Thames Haven branch) are long gone.
Medals the size of a dustbin lid to everyone involved in this massive piece of self harm……
Give one to our host then, he’s the one that keeps telling us making things ourselves makes us poorer than just importing them from foreigners.
I remember when one of the trains transferring fuel at Langley depot caught fire. I don’t know if it was the driver or the guard that went missing. Apparently they found him a couple of miles down the line still running.
Thanks for that andyf. A bit before my time – I started in ’82, and remember happy summer afternoons going to the chip ship round the corner from Langley Depot, ogling the students (female), out for lunch from the uni over the road, then taking the chips back to the depot and sitting on the barrier wagon “as trains to London thundered past”.
The odd can of lager was involved on some occasions…….
By now, the ships that would have gone through Hormuz, have rounded Africa and are arriving at european ports.
It’s only the diehard gamblers or the diehard obstinate who will risk Hormuz at the moment.
Iran *will* keep holding Hormuz hostage as long as they possibly can, which means Hormuz will be Verrah Tricky for at least another month or two, even *if* Israel and the US do a complete deep ploughing of the countryside.
So any smart ocean transporter has taken the hit and re-routed, and we’re past the delay that gives.
Rotterdam freight is picking up rapidly, and the only real difference is that the Tat from China has been delayed 2-3 weeks. Wheeeee….
Hormuz is the entry to the Persian Gulf which is a cul de sac so most sea freight traffic is not interested in it. The reason ships are re-routing via the Cape is to avoid the Red Sea (which with the Suez Canal is not a dead end) and those oh-so-friendly Houtis.
What a prating buffoon.
And, day by day, he obsessively churns out this bilious drivel, poisoning the minds of thousands with fantasy economics…
To prove his sincerity, Murph holds up to camera his last three petrol station till slips where he put in only a tenner each time.
Does he drive there at 20mph – is he even aware the law allows it.
He really is in his uppers if he can only afford a tenner at a time.
Perhaps someone should let him know that the UK is a net exporter of petrol.
No rationing in the first 3 years of WW1, although there was a willingness to take fuel from beneath the UK.
Adults in charge then, no votes for women and if you wanted rationing you could do it yourself and save money.
It’s funny to see Ritchie quoting The Economist, because The Economist is just as much of a bad joke as he is.
Decades of promising us that massive, above replacement level Third World immigration would make us RICH, and decades of promoting the global warming scam.
And now they’re shocked – shocked, I tell ye – that our economy is completely fucked, the government is bankrupt, and nothing works in Britain anymore.
How many The Economist journos can we fit on a gallows?
How many extra gallows can you build???
That will be determined by the required gallows permits, taxes, and rationing.
I’m sort of grateful to The Economist. I stopped reading it in the Bill Emmott days about 30 years ago but, before I did, I noticed it had imprinted on one of the first few inside pages a sort of sermon accounting for its founding in the first place. A sermon which was in praise of free trade. And I could not help but notice – and the FT was starting to toll a similar bell about then – that its actual content was might most charitably be described as social democrat, corporatist. It had nothing to do with free trade.
What malarkey is this, wondered I? Somebody is pulling my plonker, came back the answer.
At about the same time that cunt John Wadham always used to show up on Channel 4 news as the director of Liberty, the ‘human rights’ ‘group’. Since he plainly had no interest in liberty and his concept of human rights seemed to involve him and his mates micro-coercing, my malarkey-ometer once more pointed northwards.
In short, The Economist and ‘Liberty’ awakened me to the existence of people of whom I had been only distantly aware: Progressives, with all their insect-like minions crawling up out of the sewers, with their entryism and their nest-building and their rent-seeking and their pseudish moral misery and pale sanctimony.
I wonder if The Economist still has that sermon printed somewhere inside the first few pages of each edition …
But I thank it, and Wadham, and my own good sense, for them setting off my malarkey-ometer and, ultimately, my fuckoff-ometer.
“Liberty” used to be called the National Council for Civil Liberties and was a perfectly respectable communist-front outfit. God knows whose songs it is singing these days.
A ‘perfectly respectable communist-front outfit’.
Eh? Perhaps my sarcasm-radar is on the blink but I cannot see how such a thing could be anything other than disreputable.
Bill Emmott? I remember him well from late 1970s Oxford as an ambitious net-worker and high-achieving mediocrity. Affable and good-natured, he never put a foot wrong, never said anything controversial. In discussions of (say) Nozick’s minimal state or of conservative theorists, he was always guarded. (I was even invited to his first wedding.) So, during his tenure as editor of The Economist, I was not surprised that he favoured state involvement in the economy as well as legalising gay marriage and abolishing the British monarchy. He’s a left-liberal.
Like a lot of other media, who needs a magazine or a TV channel now?
If you have a skill, like Michael Burry, Tom Scott or The Critical Drinker, you don’t need a load of hangers on making all the money. Look at the credits on a BBC show. But Tom Scott does his videos with 3 other people.
Magazines are now like buggy whip factories.
anyway… go away now…
Look at the executive leadership of The Economist. They’re just media and publishing people like so much redundant clownworld media.
There are different discretionary levels of energy use. At one end, ambulances getting to hospital, at the other end, flying to Milan. Somewhere in between are fresh pineapple, watching telly, going to the supermarket on the other side of town, taking the kids to the zoo, going to Marlborough to buy meat from the butcher, going to London for Covent Garden.
Energy rises in price and the first thing to go is a trip to the Ferrari musuem in Maranello. You might go and see La Boheme at the multiplex instead of going to London. Maybe you take the bus to the zoo instead of driving. Not so convenient, but the kids still get a day out.
I remember things like works trips to the seaside. Church trips to the zoo. People didn’t have cars, so a bus was organised a day out to Bournemouth or Twycross. That’s very fuel efficient. And life was fine. Fresh pineapple was rare, nearly all of it was in tins and it was fine. Much less energy to ship pineapples if you get rid of the crap while its in Costa Rica ( still prefer tinned as it’s less hassle).
I’ve seen a few small behavioural shifts from my wife. Like she orders stuff from Lakeland instead of driving there.
My wife often travels by driving to the Park and Ride and jumping on a bus. She still gets preached at by the sort of people who take private flights.
I remember things like works trips to the seaside. Church trips to the zoo. People didn’t have cars, so a bus was organised a day out to Bournemouth or Twycross.
Hells bells, how old are you?
Ee’s in Swindon. Wiltshire, you know. 20 years ahead of Dorset and 80 years behind civilisation.
Swindon? Isn’t that north of the A303?
There be dragons.
I’m not going to blow Swindon’s trumpet, but there’s some lovely places around the A4 and some lovely villages around Swindon.
Have you never been to Avebury? Beats the pants off Stonehenge in my opinion.
I get the impression that the southern bit of Wiltshire might be like Midsommar though.
Agreed: Avebury is wonderful.
The cafe is good (Circles) but the pub is just ok.
Ah no. That was in my Northampton days, 1985. Making stiletto heels. But the year before I went on a trip with people from the fuel terminal.
Maybe it was the distance to the sea, as well, though.
The old joke presents: why hasn’t a Dr Who been filmed in Dorset? Because even the Tardis can’t go that far back.
Yes, I remember those as well.
Oh. Ah.
Then I shall draw a polite veil over this private grief.
1985, church day trip to Skegness. Didn’t we have a loverly time…. 🙂
In my day it was either the Miners’ Welfare (The ‘Stute) or the Primitive Methodist Chapel that organised the Skeggie trips.
A bench off of the seafront where I live ended up in Skegness after the huge storm in January.
I am on the south coast, it must have been quite the odyssey.
In Dorset (just south of the A303) we had an annual bell-ringers outing up until 2019.
So the bell ringers stay in the closet now?
So people have saved up energy resources to manage supply spikes, a supply spike comes and they use those saved resources to manage the situation which pushes off price increases into the future, hopefully far enough that the supply issue is taken care of and prices don’t go utterly insane.
So the Tater wants to force rationing, to ensure that that not only does that bad future come to pass but to bring it forward to the earliest possible present?
You do realise the entire energy sector has been captured by the JIT “philosophy” , right?
*which* saved up energy resources?
Sounds just like the policy the government here in Oz has been pushing.
His claim seems to be that prices aren’t rising higher and faster because of people’s stored resources.
the global energy system
There is no such thing. Commies WANT global systems for everything, so they can CONTROL them.
Timmer doesn’t include all of the text from Spud’s assertions. With what has been shown, it’s impossible to understand the leap to:
The reality is we need fuel rationing, and we need it now.
Doesn’t follow at all. Doesn’t fix anything. As Martin says, it appears he just wants it. And this is his – imperfect – chance to get it.
I have a feeling that even if Tim did include all of Spud’s text, it still would be impossible to understand the leap to needing fuel rationing.
Zack Polanski wants fuel rationing (as a prelude to banning all forms of private transportation except e-bikes and invalid carriages) and Murphy thinks he is preparing the way for David Paulden (a.k.a. Polanski) to acquire power. I think that is why he made the leap.
On the right we have Stephen Yaxley-Lennon calling himself “Tommy Robinson” in order to appear a “man of the people” – David Paulden is doing a mirror-distorted-image by choosing a slightly exotic name to the detriment of many decent people of Polish descent.
Thats not true, he hasn’t just adopted a random Polish name to sound more exotic. Its his family name. His family came to the UK from Poland (being originally Latvian, but moved to Ukraine then Poland) and adopted a UK sounding name, Paulden. So if anything his name is more Polanski than Paulden.
The only time you need rationing of anything is when things get really desperate and short and people will suffer illness or death without it.
We’re still running near empty trains around the UK that are less efficient than putting people in Ubers, so no, not even close to that.
We are a net exporter of petrol so nothing to be gained by rationing. We are however a net importer for diesel so this has an impact for road transport of goods. Deciding which transport to ration would be horrendously tricky. The central planners would possibly just allow food, at the expense of the diesel needed by the petrol delivery lorries!
We are an importer of jet fuel too, but a cut of 20% flights and an increase in ticket price to curtail demand would be a very effective market driven response.
We are a net exporter of petrol so nothing to be gained by rationing.
This isn’t about petrol. Commie dick Murphy wants government control of the people. Rationing is a step towards limiting the people’s freedom of movement.
With commies, the issue is never the issue.