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Slovenia becomes first EU country to introduce fuel rationing

bbc.com

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Re: Slovenia becomes first EU country to introduce fuel rationing

#31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

Yep

And i'm saying that as a guy who drives to italy to buy pasta, booze and parmesan cheese. Two bottles of jack daniels and the cost of gas is covered by the price difference (well... not anymore).

Re: Slovenia becomes first EU country to introduce fuel rationing

#32
post #18

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…

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.

Re: Slovenia becomes first EU country to introduce fuel rationing

#33
post #11

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

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.

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.

Re: Slovenia becomes first EU country to introduce fuel rationing

#34

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

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.

Re: Slovenia becomes first EU country to introduce fuel rationing

#35

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

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

"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.

Re: Slovenia becomes first EU country to introduce fuel rationing

#36
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.

Re: Slovenia becomes first EU country to introduce fuel rationing

#37
post #10

50 liters per day...

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.

Re: Slovenia becomes first EU country to introduce fuel rationing

#38

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

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

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

Re: Slovenia becomes first EU country to introduce fuel rationing

#39
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.

Re: Slovenia becomes first EU country to introduce fuel rationing

#40

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

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...

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