Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Slovenia becomes first EU country to introduce fuel rationing

bbc.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 364 posts

Re: Slovenia becomes first EU country to introduce fuel rationing

#101

Post by zejn »

tomp wrote: post #74
brendoelfrendo wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 pric…

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).

They were deregulated on highway for a very long time. Deregulation came to off-highway in 2020 as the loss of demand due to covid made the prices drop. Rusian invasion of Ukraine and subsequent price hikes made the govt regulate the prices again.

Somewhere in between, a feud started between the largest provider Petrol and govt, and govt started regulating the highway prices too for no good reason.

Re: Slovenia becomes first EU country to introduce fuel rationing

#103

Post by ZeroGravitas »

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.

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.

Re: Slovenia becomes first EU country to introduce fuel rationing

#104

Post by SirensOfTitan »

baxtr wrote: post #89
SirensOfTitan wrote: post #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, cook…

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.

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.

Re: Slovenia becomes first EU country to introduce fuel rationing

#105

Post by [deleted] »

mono442 wrote: post #49
leonidasrup wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

[deleted]

Re: Slovenia becomes first EU country to introduce fuel rationing

#106

Post by strken »

lostlogin wrote: post #88
MattGaiser wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 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?

The US is a net exporter of crude oil and is positioned to meet an oil crisis better than nearly anyone else. What do you think the US government expected from this?

Re: Slovenia becomes first EU country to introduce fuel rationing

#108

Post by leonidasrup »

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.

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...

Re: Slovenia becomes first EU country to introduce fuel rationing

#109

Post by vkou »

baxtr wrote: post #89
SirensOfTitan wrote: post #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, cook…

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.

> 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.

Re: Slovenia becomes first EU country to introduce fuel rationing

#110

Post by margalabargala »

School-Cotton wrote: post #100
margalabargala wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those are just statistics and don't have anything to do with gas. Canada is a country of 35 million bordering a rich country of 350 million.

Yes and if (1) gas in Canada were cheaper than in the US, and (2) the border between the countries was completely open, then you’d indeed see people going to Canada to buy gas.

I'm sure there's plenty of border crossings for cheaper goods.

I'm skeptical this happens in such numbers as to strain national infrastructure.

Tellingly, the ration put in place applies to Slovenian citizens, not just foreigners. Which should tell you something about "who is being blamed" vs "what solves the problem".

Post reply on HN