Slovenia becomes first EU country to introduce fuel rationing • Hacker News Board

Re: Slovenia becomes first EU country to introduce fuel rationing

#211

Post by genxy » Sat, Mar 28, 2026, 1:37 AM UTC

toomuchtodo wrote: post #114

WastedCucumber wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the point is that a world with renewable electricity wouldn't need as much oil, thereby making smaller sources of carbon sufficient.

Pakistan saves $6B/year on fossil fuel imports with their recent surge in solar, for example. Surprise Solar Uptake in Pakistan Cushions Mideast Energy Shock - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-03-17/surprise-... | https://archive.today/QdgdQ - March 17th, 2026 > Millions of factories, farmers, and households have switched to cheap solar panels from China, driving a 40% drop in Pakistan’s fossil fuel impor…

The West is doing everything it can to limit solar from China. Which is idiotic, we should be trading anything and everything for those low cost panels from China.

Re: Slovenia becomes first EU country to introduce fuel rationing

#212

Post by Krssst » Sat, Mar 28, 2026, 1:39 AM UTC

weakened_malloc wrote: post #188

jmyeet wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 Pentago…

> 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…

Once you get NREs set up you don't need a constant uninterrupted supply of replacements as fossil fuels do (we burn them after all).

We'd need replacements as old infrastructure ages out but it seems much easier to wait out a supply disruption compared to oil since this just means using old equipment while the supply is cut; sure some might break after a while but electricity production wouldn't fall immediately.

Re: Slovenia becomes first EU country to introduce fuel rationing

#213

Post by oblio » Sat, Mar 28, 2026, 1:42 AM UTC

jmyeet wrote: post #198

oblio wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 yea…

Ukraine is completely dependent on arms from the US and Europe to sustain the war effort. Ukraine is running out of men to serve in the Army. Ukraine has no path to reclaim the territory it's lost. I'm not making a judgment about whether or not this is right . This is just a sober analysis of the situation. And that is that the war is stalemated and the only way this gets resolved is to declare peace at the current b…

Your sober analysis of the situation overlooks what many respectable analysts are saying.

Ukraine has become probably the de facto #1 drone based military in the world right now.

It's made the first production use drone type that uses practically 0 Chinese manufactured components. It's making more types that use off the shelf components but are otherwise 100% Ukrainian made. Its drone types are getting more and more sophisticated and larger, with the biggest having a 3000km, 1 ton payload. That's besides the ground or sea drones.

Watch the video I linked (and several more from the same channel if you have time).

Also Russia's army is being attrited faster than reconstituted, at the moment. That's a long way to say that the Russian army in Ukraine is shrinking.

Ukraine is dependent on European finances. And the EU has guaranteed funding for at least 2 more years. The US isn't helping with any equipment, weapons. Every US weapons Ukraine uses is paid for, by Ukraine and its allies.

The real danger is if Europe flinches, which would be a monumentally bad decision as Ukraine is finally winning the war of attrition.

Re: Slovenia becomes first EU country to introduce fuel rationing

#214

Post by genxy » Sat, Mar 28, 2026, 1:43 AM UTC

MattGaiser wrote: post #71

irishcoffee wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 requ…

You missed the point of my comment. > 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. All of this? About 30% of oil usage on the h…

On the low end, we will still synthesize what we need from whatever feed stock is available. Lots of pure industrial intermediate chemicals are synthesized out of natural gas.

Oil will not be viable for transportation and heating very soon due to market pressure alone.

Re: Slovenia becomes first EU country to introduce fuel rationing

#215

Post by thelastgallon » Sat, Mar 28, 2026, 1:45 AM UTC

kvuj wrote: post #206

UncleOxidant wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who mentioned 80%? During the 1973–74 Arab oil embargo, the disruption removed approximately 4.5 million barrels per day (mb/d) from the market, which constituted about 7% of the global oil supply at the time. This disruption significantly impacted global supplies. 20% is a lot more than 7%. This could be worse than 1973-74. As a 10year-old in 1973 I remember spending a lot of time in the backseat of the station wago…

And yet we are a lot more globalized than in the 1970s. Ressources can be diverted at a much quicker rate with a lot more agility.

Yes, couldn't make either face masks or toilet paper during covid. Most people will find out how fragile everything is with idiot MBAs optimizing just-in-time for better quarterly reports!

Re: Slovenia becomes first EU country to introduce fuel rationing

#216

Post by SuperNinKenDo » Sat, Mar 28, 2026, 1:45 AM UTC

kvuj wrote: post #206

UncleOxidant wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who mentioned 80%? During the 1973–74 Arab oil embargo, the disruption removed approximately 4.5 million barrels per day (mb/d) from the market, which constituted about 7% of the global oil supply at the time. This disruption significantly impacted global supplies. 20% is a lot more than 7%. This could be worse than 1973-74. As a 10year-old in 1973 I remember spending a lot of time in the backseat of the station wago…

And yet we are a lot more globalized than in the 1970s. Ressources can be diverted at a much quicker rate with a lot more agility.

Globalization can run both ways. It can also create much more sensitivity to disruption as bets are placed in a system with a lot more moving parts.

Re: Slovenia becomes first EU country to introduce fuel rationing

#217

Post by genxy » Sat, Mar 28, 2026, 1:46 AM UTC

gzread wrote: post #203

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…

> 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 ha…

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

Re: Slovenia becomes first EU country to introduce fuel rationing

#218

Post by georgemcbay » Sat, Mar 28, 2026, 1:48 AM UTC

kpil wrote: post #121

thrownawaysz wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.…

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…

> If the clouds turns out to be a really bad storm, people will buckle down and sort it.

That'd be cool if it were true, but it isn't. The people with the economic and political power to do anything about it are massively profiting off the storm and care more about that than the damage the storm will do.

Why do you think they are all literally building end-times style bunkers these days?

Re: Slovenia becomes first EU country to introduce fuel rationing

#219

Post by legulere » Sat, Mar 28, 2026, 1:49 AM UTC

lemoncookiechip wrote: post #197

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 addre…

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.

Re: Slovenia becomes first EU country to introduce fuel rationing

#220

Post by genxy » Sat, Mar 28, 2026, 1:51 AM UTC

Krssst wrote: post #212

weakened_malloc wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Once you get NREs set up you don't need a constant uninterrupted supply of replacements as fossil fuels do (we burn them after all). We'd need replacements as old infrastructure ages out but it seems much easier to wait out a supply disruption compared to oil since this just means using old equipment while the supply is cut; sure some might break after a while but electricity production wouldn't fall immediately.

I can't believe they made an account for that comment. Like each action carries the same weight. Renewables, esp solar are super low maintenance. When you buy panels, barring some manufacturing defect, you buy them for the life of the project, not the panel.

Solar lasts so long, it is a one time purchase.