Unpowerful

Today Radio 4 and the government finally caught up with me on oil prices.
The owner of our nearest petrol station (13 miles away) told me on Saturday that he is expecting a litre of petrol to cost £1.74 by this coming weekend. It was then £1.379. That is $8.85 and $6.52 respectively per US gallon.
But, as Mr BW reminded me, 4 years ago, when Russia invaded Ukraine, the litre price was well over £2 a litre for several months. Now Russia are offering to help Europe out with supply of oil, providing the agreement is long-term. Well, that will be interesting…
No supplier will currently deliver heating oil in this area, at any price. Luckily we don’t need any urgently – with the central heating off now I think we are OK for about 30 weeks – but it might be a long time before this war is over, given that the population of Iran is around 93 million people (the 17th country globally in population and the sixth-largest country in Asia). The population is largely urbanized (over 73%) with a median age of around 32 years.
I always believed that our own North Sea oil was the ‘wrong kind’ of oil for most uses. I’m sure that is what we were told last century. Well, that is what I have written (from the blackboard) in my 3rd year geography exercise book. Miss Agnew must have got it wrong. Now it seems that the reason 80% of our own oil production is shipped abroad is simply because we don’t have the refinery capacity to process the raw product in the UK. Given that last November the UK government effectively banned new oil and gas exploration in the North Sea, our dependence on other countries for the power we need is very scary in these times.
Over the past few days, I’ve asked everyone I’ve encountered about the past history of oil and petrol shortages in this area, and have been told that panic buying and queues at petrol stations have never been seen – compared to what happens in the south east – but times are different now, so I shall be watching closely.