Did they not have rationing based on odd/even number plates in 1980s?

How many days' fuel does Taiwan keep in reserve outside of this type of situation?

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

Foreigners were coming to Slovenia just to buy gas? In such quantities that it strained infrastructure?

That definitely sounds like something that happened.

As if "multiple gas cans" wouldn't still be well under the 50 liter/day limit.

>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.

Sooner or later we will need a global reset but that sounds worse than everything else

Before calling it "the worst", I'd like more detail on how to do the comparison with the oil crises of the 1970's. My guess is that modern economies might be somewhat less oil-dependent than they were then, because the alternatives are more developed.

> Taiwan relies on LNG for 40% of its energy production and has like 10 days of fuel left--semis are implicated.

The "10 days left" thing seems to be a hoax(?)

https://www.msn.com/en-us/politics/international-relations/m...

https://www.malaymail.com/news/world/2026/03/26/is-taiwan-ru...

> Petro is pretty much upstream of everything: plastics, fertilizers, pharmaceuticals, cooking oils, lubricants, cosmetics. Dow chemical just doubled the cost of polyethylene as of April 1st. Taiwan relies on LNG for 40% of its energy production and has like 10 days of fuel left--semis are implicated.

This is, on the high end, 20% of the use of fossil fuels. We overwhelmingly burn oil and gas. If we displaced the burning, Hormuz would not matter (or would minimally matter for a few molecules) and the world would be awash in abundant supplies.

Renewable investment would solve/would have prevented this crisis.

On the plus side, Trump is helping Europe and Asia meet their climate goals.

<ducks for cover>

I hear diesel is running out in NSW and Queensland Australia. Good thing you don't need diesel to run mining operations. Oh wait..

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.

It's not a free market. Off-highway prices are regulated and were adjusted by the executive govt branch on biweekly basis, now switched to weekly. Slovenia is small and "gas tourism" is common since fossil juices in neighboring countries are priced higher.

Why not raise the prices? Sure, but then don't complain about the inflation, revolt, and stoning of elected representatives.

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.

There was an election recently and it’s possible there will soon be another… That’s why the fuel is so cheap.

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

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.

My family with 3 people, two dirt bikes, and a gas generator for camping owns four 5 gallon gas cans. So I alone without trying can fit 80L without even filling up my car.

I agree. Ironically ones complaining the loudest about fuel prices are be far-right populists, who tend to be against renewables.

Hey man,sometimes you just have to drive 400 miles a day, everyday.

Fuel prices are regulated here, and we had an election right now and a huge gas price hike would be bad for the current government (not decided yet if they stay or go). The government basically lowered the gas tax for a bit to keep prices stable (they also raised the gas taxes during covid to keep the prices "stable").

The prices will go up soon, that's why everyone is panicking and filling up canisters of gas.

How do you put renewables into the petrol tank?

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.

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

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 three plants, at Tricastin, Gravelines, and Dampierre, started the same year and France installed 56 reactors over the next 15 years."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_France#Messme...

Slovenia is a small country with 2 million people, bordering countries with a total of over 82 million people. The neighbors are also relatively rich countries, such as Austria and Italy

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.

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.

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...

Yeah as if Europe doesn't have Oil it isn't exploiting because of renewable legislation..

No numbers provided, but from TFA:

>In Slovenia, this has resulted in so-called "fuel tourism", as drivers from neighbouring countries, particularly Austria, take advantage of the lower, regulated prices here.

Europe has no (meaningful amounts of economically viable to extract) lithium either.

Those limits also do exists somehow in other countries. In France for example it's been a very long time some petrol station say "150 EUR maximum". People are going to say it's not a "real" limit but I did hit it once or twice while going on vacation: 80 liters tank, near empty / car only taking 98 octane fuel (more expensive than 95) / ultra-pricey fuel at petrol stations on the highway (so pricey it's usually cheaper to just get off the highway, fill the tank in a village, and go back to the highway).

At 2.2 EUR / liter, 75 liters is 165 EUR so I was blocked at 150 EUR.

50 liters I definitely cannot fill my car entirely.

Yes, mostly italians and austrians

https://svet24.si/novice/slovenija/gorivo-dizel-bencinski-se...

https://sobotainfo.com/novica/lokalno/foto-video-neverjetna-...

https://sobotainfo.com/novica/globalno/video-avstrijci-k-nam...

https://www.prlekija-on.net/lokalno/40253/ponekod-zmanjkalo-...

And it's not the first time:

https://vecer.com/slovenija/izredne-razmere-zaradi-navala-na...

I have 30 days of food in my house and I have maintained that since probably 2021. It doesn't mean I will run out in 30 days, since I can still buy food although at higher prices lately. I personally never let it dip below 20 probably.

No, as of now, you can’t pump more than 50L. Doesn’t matter whether you’re a citizen or not.

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 - even a long war in the middle east, are bumps in the road, not a cliff. If the clouds turns out to be a really bad storm, people will buckle down and sort it.

Well, Slovenia is a small country and has land borders with many others. Imagine that gas in New Jersey was $1 per gallon cheaper than in New York and Pennsylvania. I guess a lot of people would drive to NJ gas stations.

They are more developed, sure, and the US (from a US centric view) is producing a lot of oil now. However, consider that pretty much all of the goods you see in the supermarket got there via diesel (trains, semi-trucks). The percentage of semi-trucks operating on electricity is still miniscule at this point. Air transport? All petroleum. Consider also other things like fertilizers - we're heavily dependent on nitrogen fertilizers derived from petroleum and planting season in the northern hemisphere is starting right about now. Yes we're producing a lot more electricity with renewables, but demand is also up.

Oh I'm sorry, that was actually my mistake, I should have been much more specific, and I will update the comment if I still can. My intention was to emphasize that Taiwan may have to start limiting electricity to its industrial sector based on its current runway. Per the article you listed:

> Yeh Tsung-kuang, a professor in the Department of Engineering and System Science at National Tsing Hua University, said Taiwan's maximum LNG inventory is only 11 days but that does not mean the island will run out of fuel or face outages within that time period

EDIT: updated comment to be more specific.

You could visit an alternate timeline where you have as much renewable investment into energy as you'd like going back decades and while it would help with the fertiliser situation massively it wouldn't solve the problem of needing a supply of carbon atoms to make the carbon-based substances in the list.

You can't make insulin, brake fluid or PVC out of electricity alone.

> Yeh Tsung-kuang, a professor in the Department of Engineering and System Science at National Tsing Hua University, said Taiwan's maximum LNG inventory is only 11 days but that does not mean the island will run out of fuel or face outages within that time period

So he's saying they've got an 11 day supply and that they won't face any shortages during that 11 days... but what about after 11 days? I guess I'm not sure how that's different, how it's a hoax?

Hormuz might not matter that much in the future since Saudi and the other countries will build even more pipelines and ports which are on the other side. Short-term is dire though.

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 requires massive amounts of oil.

Renewables are amazing and I’m all for them. Let’s keep that train rolling.

Oil isn’t going away, pretending otherwise is willful ignorance.

You can't provide heating in winter using renewables.

I was just talking to a kiwi yesterday about diesel. The price has more than doubled already there. So there goes large chunk of the US beef supply.

Rest assured the toilet papers fiasco didn't only affect this corner of the world.

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.

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

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...

For electricity generation, the UK is currently generating 50% via renewables. It goes up and down each day of course, storage is not a solved problem yet.

Nice visualisations of the current status: https://grid.iamkate.com/

Electricity is only a part of the whole energy sector, but it's relevant to this thread about EVs.

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.

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.

I'm totally ignorant as to Slovenia, but as a general comment on taxation regressive price increases/externality taxes/sin taxes are easily made up for by simply giving everyone a fixed sum of money (that can either be gathered specifically through the regressive tax or just through the normal non-regressive tax pool).

Ethereum has the weird issue where "votes" and "money" are different things and they only want to redistribute votes and not money, but that's not a problem here...

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.

> 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.

It is asymmetrical warfare. A hundred plus ships went through the straight daily. Attackers only need to occasionally damage a ship to make the crossing look deeply unappealing. No military intervention can promise 100% defense to passing vessels.

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

Sounds like a good plan unless we've invented 2 much cheaper and faster to deploy methods to generate electricity.

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.

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.

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.

> 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?

One thing you have to keep in mind is that in Slovenia, your employer is required to cover your commuting expenses. If there’s no viable public transit option (which is the case for most of Slovenia outside of bigger cities), they have to pay you for gas per km.

So if the regulations were to suddenly be lifted, this would have a domino effect on not only truckers but also regular commuters, which would then mean companies would have to compensate for the increased labour costs by raising the prices of their products/services even more.

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).

Is global economic collapse not an eschatological scenario?

When you say "everything is still getting better", what do you mean? Because the price of fuel and food, isn't getting better. It seems to be getting worse. Your version of "reality" doesn't seem to reflect the experience of a lot of people.

> people will buckle down and sort it. It's an interesting series of words that don't say a lot. There is much to wonder about.

Buckle down and sort it = wars around the world and mass (and I mean mass) migration

Oil going through Hormuz is 20%, not 80% of global supply. It's true that demand is pretty inelastic, but it's not like it can't be cut at all.

> said Taiwan's maximum LNG inventory is only 11 days but that does not mean the island will run out of fuel or face outages within that time period

I guess I read that as "we've got 11 days supply of LNG and we won't face any shortages during that 11 days" - how is that a better situation?

You don't have to get carbon from oil extracted from underground and you don't have to get oil from the middle east. That's merely where the bulk of it happens to come from at present for price and historical reasons.

That would require some super effective anti air. Otherwise such a pipeline is an easy target.

And even the most anti air protected place on earth - Negev plant near Dimona city got hit with a warning shot. And they have 3 or 4 layers of anti air, most of them doubled (both US and Isreaeli). It's impossible to protect multiple pipelines to that extent.

And Isreal just said that they will keep attacking Iran no matter any peace deals or armistice.

The only logical course of action for Iran is to go down swinging, taking the rest of the world with them.

Yes, but all those things, combined, are 20% of the usage. I'd say if you remove about the 50 % used for cars, that's a pretty large improvement.

Oil isn't magic, you can just make it, and the reason we don't is merely that it's expensive to do that, whereas it's just there under the ground - as a fossil fuel.

But because you can just make it from ingredients everybody already has, this puts a ceiling on its actual price if you have energy independence. If you need to burn oil, you can't make oil because that's a vicious circle which would need even more oil. But so long as the only you want oil is for its other properties that's fine.

Hydrocarbons are incredibly simple, the clue is in their name, a bunch of Hydrogen (literally the most common element in the whole universe) and Carbon (also extremely common). The only reason not to make any particular hydrocarbons you need (e.g. to make JetA for a airliner) is it'd be very energy intensive and instead you can just distil some crude oil to get the hydrocarbons you want...

Strictly speaking, the oil in the Earth's crust is both finite and more than 50% already extracted.

However, a closed cycle of renewable-powered vehicles and processing sites growing crops for biorefineries which are then hydrocracked into the various petrochemical additives to maintain the infrastructure with surplus left over for the rest of society has been proven to be viable going back to the early 2010s.

Leong et al has a great survey of how the entire market of irreplaceable petrochemical uses (e.g. medical grade plastic) and their upstream steps (e.g. metal smelting for making agricultural vehicles) can theoretically be made to work from wind alone, with total immunity to peak oil when it does eventually happen. Although the carbon molecules are essential, having a no-oil well industrial civilization is just a matter of long and arduous implementation and negotiation with vested interests.

Ships are starting to become electrified. Currently for fixed routes.

"Drivers" doing this isn't solved by a 50 liter limit.

"Lithium mining commences in Finland"

https://www.electrive.com/2026/02/12/lithium-mining-commence...

This week, the first spodumene vein was blasted from the rock at the open-pit mine in western Finland, marking the occasion with a ceremonial event attended by invited guests and media.

The 150€ is a reservation on your debit card before filling up, since the banks or the station doesn't want the credit risk. It's released when the actual sum is booked.

I think it's just what a reasonable "full tank" was a while back.

You can just restart if you need more.

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

100% this. People need to understand this.

Yep

And i'm saying that as a guy who drives to italy to buy pasta, booze and parmesan cheese. Two bottles of jack daniels and the cost of gas is covered by the price difference (well... not anymore).

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

11 days of supply in the system. If they can afford it they can add to that with new shipments. It is not like Taiwan is blockaded. Just that global supply from single region is limited.

This might be lot bigger issue if China managed blockaded Taiwan during an invasion. Or destroy port facilities sufficiently.

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

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.

Can I just state the horrible reality: Only as long as we accept that islamists get to attack civilians directly and other armies don't. If we fight with the same rules, this stops being a problem.

There comes a point where there is only one decision left.

... and if Iran keeps raising it will eventually become the only choice available, at which point we'll do it (and can I just say the truly horrible part: ... which was going to happen at some point anyway with the islamists in power)

Driving over a border in Europe happens without you necessarily noticing.

That isn’t true of US borders.

Because the way how the EU electricity market operates first to supply electric power are the power plants with the lowest operating costs. This are usually renewables and nuclear power plants. Both are capital expensive and cheap in operating costs.

Usually the capacity factor of European nuclear reactors is higher than 60%.

olkiluoto-3 nuclear reactor, had capacity factor 70% in the year 2024: https://world-nuclear.org/nuclear-reactor-database/details/o...

Mochovce-3 had capacity factor 74% in the year 2024: https://world-nuclear.org/nuclear-reactor-database/details/M...

In the U.S. they really try to get maximum from nuclear reactors. https://world-nuclear.org/nuclear-reactor-database/details/W...

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.

Wot?

Solar makes a fair bit where I am. Hydro works fine. Geothermal works fine. Wind works fine. Aircon is very efficient.

This is harder in plenty of regions but a blanket ‘can’t be done’ is way off the mark.

As the value of the oil goes up it becomes worth it to risk the ship. Even if you're paying to insure it there's an equilibrium point between odds and value.

Obviously 50-50 doesn't pencil out at $100 or even $200 a barrel. But 1:50 might at $2xx. IDK I'm not a shipping expert.

Whatever Iran wants is the cheapest course to resolution.

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

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

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.

Raising the price of fuel will do wonders for solving that.

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?

I'm not sure about that. AFAIK it's just per km and not impacted by gas price.

https://www.racunovodja.com/clanki.asp?clanek=232/kilometrin...

You can, and should, over the entirety of europe apart from the northern parts of the nordic countries electric heat pumps are now simply more efficient than gas powered furnaces. This is true even if powered by gas based electricity - but obviously makes it possible to power them via renewables as well.

People in Quebec (Canada), which is colder than just about all of Europe, have been providing heating in winter using renewables for decades (thanks to an excess of renewables).

...you can? Electric heaters exist?

The other thing is that it is WAY too easy to distract yourself from your solvable problems by focusing on the big ones - you have to fight that with ferocity.

Why get out of debt? The country is a brazillian trillion in debt we’re doomed.

Why invest for retirement or save? The market is fraud anyway.

Why exercise and lose weight? The planet is doomed anyway.

A European buying American booze? I thought that had stopped?

Pakistan saves $6B/year 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 imports between 2022 and 2024, the researchers found. Additionally, the country is estimated to have saved $12 billion through reduced LNG imports in the past five years as cumulative imports of Chinese photovoltaics soared past 50 gigawatts, the report said.

Pakistan says rooftop solar output to exceed grid demand in some hubs next year - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46070915 - November 2025 (254 comments)

Pakistan's 22 GW Solar Shock: How a Fragile State Went Full Clean Energy - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43620309 - April 2025 (35 comments)

Not blockaded, sure, but how long would it take for these new shipments to arrive?

You need metrics to compare it over time; I only have a weeks worth of food in the house but I shop weekly kind of thing.

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 high end. You are listing the small uses for oil.

May some oil always be needed? Yes. But nowhere near as much as we produce today.

Did you read the comment you replied to?

> This is, on the high end, 20% of the use of fossil fuels. We overwhelmingly burn oil and gas. If we displaced the burning, Hormuz would not matter (or would minimally matter for a few molecules) and the world would be awash in abundant supplies.

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.

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

Sure just send the continental german army straight for the oil fields, worked out great last time.

I wonder what's the EROI on building a tanker with 2% chance of being hit each time. They hold a lot fuel, but making them can't be light on energy.

Technically true, but ship + cargo are going to be worth over a billion dollars. Any ship carrying petroleum products is going up be a juicy target for the Iranians looking to flex their muscles.

Someone could say the risk is financially worth it, but you are not going to have many takers. Also might find few crew who want to sign onto your vessels.

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

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.

If you think the Seal isn't affordable then don't buy one.

You can buy a brand new Dacia Spring for only £12,240. Personally I don't think it's a great car but it's certainly doesn't cost 40K.

If it were my money I'd spend a bit more on either a used Jag ePace or a Renault 5 but some people prefer new cars I guess.

> Define affordable.

Cheaper than the total cost of ownership of a combustion vehicle at $150-$200/barrel for prolonged periods of time.

Are We Approaching an Unprecedented Energy Crisis? - https://thedispatch.com/newsletter/dispatch-energy/iran-war-... - March 26th, 2026

France confirms oil crisis, says 30-40 percent of Gulf energy infrastructure destroyed - https://www.france24.com/en/france-confirms-oil-crisis-says-... - March 25th, 2026

Even the best-case scenario for energy markets is disastrous - https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2026/03/22/e... | https://archive.today/5OhRI - March 22nd, 2026

That won't "solve" anything. Car prices will rise, many people can't afford the switch regardless, too much new EV demand could destabilize the grid in population centers, and throwing away vehicles that are already on the road by replacing them with newly manufactured ones is terrible from an emissions perspective.

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".

> becomes worth it to risk the ship

There are a lot of human beings on those ships. It strikes me as awful that their lives would be risked under these circumstances, and that happening wouldn't really be a proper solution to the overarching problem. It would be something of a tragedy if things got so severe that the risk was assumed worthwhile and presumably, people on board were exposed to it outside of their will or control. I suspect many of them don't have a lot of options.

We could achieve "peace for our time"... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peace_for_our_time

In California my electricity to drive my Chevy Volt is more expensive than gasoline, if gasoline is less than $5 a gallon. So for basically the last 100k miles I've owned it, electricity was more expensive. The same goes for many plugin hybrids. Luxury EVs still win out because luxury sedans usually only get 25 mpg mixed max.

Being positioned to eat shit better than anyone else is still eating shit. Our economy isn't independent of the rest of the world.

Datacenter investment is currently a noticable fraction of US GDP. That's as globalized as it gets, we aren't even remotely self sufficient on that front. What happens to our economy if that segment crumbles overnight?

> What do you think the US government expected from this?

That they’d beat Iran and have some friendly dictator installed in short order.

Are you arguing that this is going how the US planned?

Which is adjusted to compensate for inflation of fuel prices every few years, so they would eventually have to raise that to cover the increased prices.

People kept sailing past the Houthis even though some ships got attacked. They sailed past Somali pirates too. So ships obviously tolerate some level of risk from violence.

100 people will die on American roads today, and another tomorrow. Most of them die because they commute to work because a lower paying job closer, or a smaller dwelling near their job, isn't that appealing. Another portion will die because driving aggressively and fast seemed fun. Another portion will die because they like alcohol more than safety.

All peace is transient, the question is for how long per unit of investment of blood, treasure, and time.

I knew the CA grid was in a bad place but wow. What are you paying per kWh?

Always worth mentioning we should be using heat pumps, not straight resistive heating.

most of the countries don't have enough hydro to make it feasible

For sure. Heat pumps aren't the best option everywhere (though modern heat pumps probably function acceptably at lower temperatures than most people realize), but if you need to do electric heating, they are the best option most places.

Yeah, but now wind and solar have made it feasible just about everywhere.

For "human" temperatures don't they just degrade back to the efficiency of resistive heating? Or are some places actually cold enough to push the factor below 1?

There's little sunshine in winter. Wind is better but it's still intermittent.

And geothermal, biogas and tidal.