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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

#41

Post by brendoelfrendo »

gpm wrote: 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…

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...

Re: Slovenia becomes first EU country to introduce fuel rationing

#42

Post by zejn »

kypro wrote: post #11
mlinhares wrote: post #2

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.

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.

Re: Slovenia becomes first EU country to introduce fuel rationing

#43

Post by msteffen »

gpm wrote: 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…

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.

Re: Slovenia becomes first EU country to introduce fuel rationing

#44

Post by trinix912 »

ajsnigrutin wrote: post #27
hirako2000 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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.

Yes. When people saw that some stations were out of it everyone and their mom brought out their old beaters and canisters and refilled those too, just in case.

Re: Slovenia becomes first EU country to introduce fuel rationing

#45

Post by zejn »

MattGaiser wrote: post #34
mlinhares wrote: post #2

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.

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.

Re: Slovenia becomes first EU country to introduce fuel rationing

#46

Post by seydor »

gpm wrote: 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…

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

Re: Slovenia becomes first EU country to introduce fuel rationing

#47

Post by b65e8bee43c2ed0 »

helsinkiandrew wrote: post #38
b65e8bee43c2ed0 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

if those reserves were economically viable to extract, they would be already being extracted.

Re: Slovenia becomes first EU country to introduce fuel rationing

#48

Post by marginalia_nu »

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.

Re: Slovenia becomes first EU country to introduce fuel rationing

#49

Post by mono442 »

leonidasrup wrote: post #40
mlinhares wrote: post #2

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 t…

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.

Re: Slovenia becomes first EU country to introduce fuel rationing

#50

Post by 7952 »

haunter wrote: post #23
toomuchtodo wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Define affordable. A €40k Seal is anything but affordable. Eastern Europe (and I don't put Slovenia in this case here, they are much closer to Western Europe in every sense) will not mass change to EVs suddenly when everyone is shopping for 10 years old diesels from Western Europe for maximum €10k

New cars have questionable affordability for most people. Particularly when you factor in dubious design choices and expensive marketing. Cars and driving are expensive. If that was a barrier there wouldn't be many people on the road.

Also, the Electric polo is supposed to be released at around 25k Euros. Given the lower running costs that seems like a good deal relative to legacy designs. For all those people will to spend 40k on a car you could put the money into solar panels instead.

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