Petrol panic in the UK: what’s really going on?

All the media picked up on this and no doubt social media played its part. You cannot suppress “news” nor the way it is portrayed.
Using “frenzy”and “panic” by responsuble organisations is no help.

But if that is an accurate description, then why should they not?

Is the media supposed to suppress news that affects our lives? I hope not. I wonder how news could be presented without raising concerns.

‘Just in time’ is fine for fresh foods, and if businesses want to adopt this approach for non-essential products that’s their choice. If that’s how the fuel companies operate then no wonder we have seen problems.

Just in time is applied to many businesses, from manufacturing to food to fuel, to keep costs contained for one. The fuel industry has successfully worked this way for a long time, it seems, but can be easily upset by a change in behaviour. This is an issue hat needs to be considered in the light of recent events, but the remedy seems to lie in the hands of the haulage industry to ensure they provide the necessary service. That may well mean improving working conditions and wages; perhaps redeploying drivers from less-essential work might help.

All over the country there are disused filling stations alongside the major roads and in small towns and villages as the supply of road fuel has progressively switched to supermarkets and motorway service stations.

These disused sites [which are now often operating as car sales premises and valeting facilities or as small grocery outlets] might still have large [but empty] fuel tanks beneath them, but it is likely that the fuel tanks under the remaining filling stations have not necessarily been increased in capacity so they have to be replenished more frequently.

Telemetering equipment relays the fuel levels to the suppliers and supplies are delivered when there are a few days’ provision at normal depletion rates left in the tanks. To replenish any differently would be inefficient and ultimately increase the costs that feed into prices. The picture is complicated by the different types and grades of road fuel required by vehicles and the inability to substitute one for another.

A drop in demand, as occurred during the lockdowns, is not a problem, but a sudden spike is more difficult to cope with. Hence the problems we have seen. Relying on a tanker fleet in the hands of a number of different companies supplying the different brands of fuel to differently branded forecourts adds to the logistical difficulties of dealing with a temporary supply anomaly. You won’t see a Sainsbury’s tanker topping up the tanks of a Waitrose filing station, for example, even though the Sainsbury’s branded tanker might be owned and operated by a contract haulage company that also services the sites of other supermarkets and possibly contains a generic fuel.

All-electric motoring is the long-term solution to most of these difficulties and removes reliance on wagonloads of different fuels having to be carted around the country; however, there is no end in sight for the requirement for diesel road fuel for the heavy haulage industry. So long as there is reliability of electricity supply, with either no outages or reserve battery capacity, electric traction for light vehicles will be much more efficient.

Also, given that for a large percentage of vehicles, recharging does not need to be concentrated in specific and extremely sophisticated facilities for safety reasons, there will be much more flexibility in the system although it will be essential to have a network of recharging stations at frequent intervals and existing filling station forecourts will probably have a major role initially until vehicle batteries improve to provide more range and greater rationalisation occurs. Being able to recharge from a 13A socket anywhere will change the logistics of mobility. Generating capacity will then become the determining factor and that’s a different story.

“Frenzy” and “panic”. When does rational resourcefulness turn into a stampede with anti-social consequences?

Hearing the “news” that there could be a temporary supply problem at a small number of filling stations, some people decided to stock up for the week ahead. In each individual case, possibly a highly sensible decision. Each person probably told somebody else, the story flew around social media, and queues started forming on the approaches to filling stations.

Before long, the herd realised that if they didn’t get in quickly they could end up back in lockdown for a week or more and it soon became a case of the devil take the hindmost.

I can’t see how this can be prevented, or, in a rapidly moving scenario, at what point ‘the authorities’ can intervene and recognise the emergence of a run on the petrol pumps, any more than the government could anticipate the run on the Northern Rock Bank in 2007 as a result of the collapse in confidence over its ability to repay savers’ funds.

” All-electric motoring is the long-term solution to most of these difficulties ……. We should not underestimate the difficulty in achieving that – apart from the capacity to manufacture and replace batteries (worldwide, of course, not just on our island).

An electricity supply that can deal with the huge added loads of electric vehicles, home heating and cooking, needs appropriate generating and distribution capacity and I see no sign of any substantial increase in that, not that will come on stream in the next few years. Nuclear is staggering on with a new build well behind schedule. Wind and solar are most unlikely to be adequate and we have seen recently what happens with a variable supply – little wind, little power.

And we are not alone; other countries will be following the same path, competing for the same engineering resources and materials.

”Generating capacity will then become the determining factor and that’s a different story.”. Absolutely. If I am still around when the time comes I think I’ll still be thinking of a pony and trap.

I agree. We are miles away (pardon the pun) from having sufficient non-fossil generating capacity to supply all of the activities that currently generate net CO2. In addition to the existing demand, of which only just under half is currently covered, we need to add transport, heating and industry. If we are to stop producing CO2 in steel manufacture, for example, we need to produce hydrogen by electrolysis to use as a reducing agent instead of coke. To do this now, would take all of the renewable electricity currently produced worldwide.

Then there is the variability of wind and solar. Currently, the world has sufficient storage capacity to cover a period of a few minutes. Last month, we had very much reduced wind and solar for about 3 weeks.

Many so called experts are banging on about heat pumps and the hydrogen economy, but they seem to ignore the elephant in the room. We need a huge programme to build more nuclear power stations and we need to invest “as much as it takes” to develop a viable fusion reactor.

In terms of “all-electric motoring” and the lack of generating capacity we need to consider whether ordinary private cars should be able to travel at more than fifty miles an hour, should have a range of more than 200 miles a week on average, should have a capacity of more than five people and 150 kilos of baggage, should weigh more than 1500 kilos [before batteries], and should have towing capacity. This should be the end of SUV’s, people carriers, limousines, and of wealthy people being able to buy their way round the carbon reduction problem by consuming excess electricity.

It would be best for any long journey to include a substantial element of public transport and for all special transport needs [e.g. load carrying, multiple passenger transport, off-road activity, camper van/motor home] to be supplied by an expanded hire trade.

Should there be imposed limits on the distance to work travelled by car? Should the number of occupants be a factor?

Alternatively, could pricing and taxation mechanisms achieve the necessary reductions in consumption and still be fair to all?

Can the value of time, of contact with family, of convenient local shopping and social activity, be developed to compensate for the adverse effect of such changes to our way of life.

Previous attempts to disperse employment have had limited success and many of the new towns created in the 1950’s and ’60’s have become commuter dormitories as the conurbations have expanded rather than recoiled. Should major sporting and entertainment events continue to take place in the capital? [Was this year’s Oxford & Cambridge Boat Race any the less for taking place on the River Great Ouse in Ely? There are many high-quality stadia outside London capable of hosting all types of Cup Final.]

I don’t think we can just put all our faith in big power station projects to get us out of the situation we are in within the timescales enacted for carbon reduction. Alternatives have to be contemplated.

Dr Jarvis — Was it not democratically decided by Parliament that the decision to quit the EU would be taken by a simple majority of the electors voting across the entire UK? Thus the “major political decision” was not made by politicians but by the voters. That the outcome could be marginal was one of the risks the politicians knowingly took. It would have been politically unsustainable for the government to have resiled from the verdict of the referendum, and labelling it as “advisory” never had any legitimate foundation.

It is arguable that more people are content with the outcome now than at the time of the referendum, current difficulties notwithstanding.