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Slovenia becomes first EU country to introduce fuel rationing

bbc.com

281–290 of 364 posts

Re: Slovenia becomes first EU country to introduce fuel rationing

#281
post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We can barely afford it at the current price. The solution would be charging foreign transit the non-regulated price but that would be considered discriminatory.

Subsidizing gas is an expensive temporary bandaid solution. Higher prices will drive EV adoption and busses. In the EU, EVs or public transit is the only long term solutions we have.

Lifting the gas price regulations will somehow make EVs more affordable to the average Slovenian?

Electricity is expensive here too.

Public transit wise, good luck. The bus system has only been getting worse (despite sustained usage), trains are not much better. There just aren’t any viable routes in many places — it would take me 6h to commute 80km to Ljubljana (3 transfers with waiting time in between), it takes 1h30 by car in peak traffic.

Both busses and trains are also much more expensive than just driving yourself unless you’re retired or in school and thus have a subsidized ticket. And this is with regulated gas prices.

Re: Slovenia becomes first EU country to introduce fuel rationing

#282
post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is global economic collapse not an eschatological scenario? Not really, no. In this case 20-25% of the world's oil disappearing doesn't sound like it should be an 'everything collapses' scenario, we still have >75% of the oil around and oil isn't the only energy source. Everyone has always seen a "worst economic collapse of my lifetime" and although this one looks like it is going to be unusually horrific it isn't…

You're missing that the impact is not evenly distributed. It doesn't mean everyone gets 25% less petrol, tighten the belt a little bit, take one fewer trip to starbucks, and all is well. It means rich countries get the 75% while the poor countries get nothing and starve. What happens when a nuclear power like India starts to lack food?

> What happens when a nuclear power like India starts to lack food?

Personally I think that actually seems a bit unlikely. Most of India's energy doesn't come from oil and doesn't go to agriculture. It seems plausible that the global economy will be able to overcome the food and fertiliser issues even in the short term, there is a lot of food out there.

I'm expecting the threat to be more complex economic goods like construction, manufactured goods, leisure and general logistics. I don't want to downplay the risk, famine in India is a scary thought, but I don't really see how we'd get there from closing the Strait of Hormuz without a lot of bad luck. The problem is it is going to materially impoverish a number of people and collapse complex supply chains rather than make it hard to get food to them.

Re: Slovenia becomes first EU country to introduce fuel rationing

#283
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…

Yes, but is it a mistake or deliberate? The Iran war has been planned since GW Bush. Now we have a president who hates the EU and Ukraine more than he hates Russia and China and he has Greenland ambitions. He is currently dragging out the war and Rubio was in the EU to string people along yet again. If he drags out the war long enough, the EU might need to make concessions on certain issues. What the EU should do but…

Why should the EU drop sanctions on Russian gas and oil – that’s just appeasing an aggressor and abandoning Ukraine?

Re: Slovenia becomes first EU country to introduce fuel rationing

#284
post #26
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Electric cars aren't cheap, and electricity prices are very high in Europe.

Not true. No new car is cheap, and electricity is now cheaper than gas or diesel.

We're looking for a new car. I'd love to go electrical, but there are a few problems:

1) I have no garage and no parking space next to my home. I can't charge it.

2) We have no trustworthy garage for repairs. It turns out the garage regulations require a separate space for electrical forcsafety, and nobody has room to expand.

Apart from that, electricity in Belgium is expensive. I did the math on swapping our gas heater for a heat pump, but I'd pay more for energy even of the amount of watts is so much lower.

Re: Slovenia becomes first EU country to introduce fuel rationing

#285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You probably mean 3 much cheaper and faster to deploy methods to generate electricity. In Germany, Poland, Balkans it's solar, wind, coal.

Coal is generally more expensive than nuclear if you factor in health and carbon, which you should.

How do you measure health effects of different sources of electric energy? If you compare deaths per TWh, then nuclear power is much, much safer then coal energy.

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/death-rates-from-energy-p...

Nuclear power has problem with public perception.

One source of this media. Media loves to write and talk about nuclear incidents and really blow this out of proportion to real health hazards. For decades, newsrooms have operated under the premise that 'if it bleeds it leads'. If something happen infrequently and could have big impact on many people it makes more interesting news story.

Flight industry has similar public perception problem. Transport statistic shows that travel by airplane is safer the car, yet much more people fear flying then driving. A deadly airplane crash is reported in all newspapers, the daily deaths from the car crashes are not even mentioned.

Popular tv-series "The Simpsons" (three eyed fish, green radioactive goo), movies Spiderman (if I get bitten by a radioactive spider), Hulk (gamma rays make you super strong), China Syndrome, the german movie "Die Volke", etc., doesn't help much with education about nuclear power.

Deaths from burning coal don't get much attention in the media, because the happen continuously each year, over decades.

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanres/article/PIIS2213-2...

Re: Slovenia becomes first EU country to introduce fuel rationing

#286
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Europe simply does not have enough known oil reserves to put a dent in current prices even if it exploited them all. There may still be good arguments to do so anyway, such as it being less carbon intensive than importing oil, but there is absolutely no magic lever we can pull that would fix this problem that we're just not pulling due to renewables legislation.

Britain could start extracting oil from its European fields instead of just buying the same oil and gas from Denmark. Sanctions could be lifted on Russian oil. Duties could be dropped. There are levers.

There’s very little oil and gas left in the UK part of the North Sea

The Tories granted over a hundred licenses for exploration in the last ten years and so far it’s led to the supply of one months gas consumption

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2026/mar/28/north-sea-o...

Re: Slovenia becomes first EU country to introduce fuel rationing

#287
post #272
post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If so they must have very low domestic electricity prices (according to many people who continue to claim renewables = lower prices!) Oh, wait, they don't. At all

That’s because the price is set by the highest marginal producer

Most of the UKs recent renewables are on a fixed price supply basis and when the market prices goes over this the excess is eventually fed back into reducing consumer bills

Re: Slovenia becomes first EU country to introduce fuel rationing

#288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Like this? https://www.thinkgeoenergy.com/vulcan-energy-achieves-drilli... Economic viability depends on many things, lithium prices have been pretty volatile in the past, battery production in Europe as customers are just scaling up.

Or this https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/feb/26/cornwall...

Re: Slovenia becomes first EU country to introduce fuel rationing

#289
post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're missing that the impact is not evenly distributed. It doesn't mean everyone gets 25% less petrol, tighten the belt a little bit, take one fewer trip to starbucks, and all is well. It means rich countries get the 75% while the poor countries get nothing and starve. What happens when a nuclear power like India starts to lack food?

> What happens when a nuclear power like India starts to lack food? Personally I think that actually seems a bit unlikely. Most of India's energy doesn't come from oil and doesn't go to agriculture. It seems plausible that the global economy will be able to overcome the food and fertiliser issues even in the short term, there is a lot of food out there. I'm expecting the threat to be more complex economic goods like…

Food quantity has never been the issue. The logistics are. Food is the most direct issue, but "just" the economic turmoil alone is reason enough to worry. No one was starving in the Weimar republic, yet ...

Re: Slovenia becomes first EU country to introduce fuel rationing

#290
post #253
post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Ukraine has become probably the de facto #1 drone based military in the world right now. I think Iran may well have that crown. Ukraine certainly was a testbed for drone use, first starting with cheaper but still military grades drones like the Bayraktar [1] but now with more homegrown versions. But Russia has followed suite and adapted. > Also Russia's army is being attrited faster than reconstituted, Russia has a…

You are so far behind the news that it's funny. Bayraktar stopped being good in this war - or cutting edge - about 3 years ago, which is an eternity.

Do yourself a favor and ask your favorite chatbot about the Ukraine drone industry and their military use. Ask about FP-1, FP-2, FP-5 Flamingo, Ukraine's ballistic missiles, their ground drones, their naval drones, their Shahed interceptor drones (which the Gulf States want to buy!), fiber optic FPV drones, etc.

I'm actually following this war daily and have followed since it started.

Use your chatbot and if you want more look for Paul Warburg, Lines on Maps (both YouTube), UnderstandingWar.org, etc - also follow their sources.

Regular people have NO idea what kind of military Ukraine has built.

If Ukraine's economy is supported for 2 more years, their odds of bringing down the Russian military are probably 80%.

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