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Slovenia becomes first EU country to introduce fuel rationing
- mlinhares 7mo agoHope that gets Europe to invest in renewables and leave oil behind.
- rwyinuse 7mo agoI agree. Ironically ones complaining the loudest about fuel prices are be far-right populists, who tend to be against renewables.
- callamdelaney 7mo agoYeah as if Europe doesn't have Oil it isn't exploiting because of renewable legislation..
- argsnd 7mo agoEurope 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.
- calvinmorrison 7mo agoSure just send the continental german army straight for the oil fields, worked out great last time.
- callamdelaney 7mo agoBritain 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.
- jopsen 7mo ago> Sanctions could be lifted on Russian oil I'd rather freeze.
- youngtaff 7mo agoThere’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-oil-gas-licences-conservatives https://www.theguardian.com/business/2026/mar/28/north-sea-o...
- callamdelaney 7mo agoThe guardian would say that to be fair
- youngtaff 7mo agoSo do you have evidence that those North Sea licenses produced more oil and gas? The Guardian’s report is based on someone else’s research, they didn't just make up the story… they’re not the Daily Mail…
- varispeed 7mo agoHow do you put renewables into the petrol tank?
- kypro 7mo agoHasn'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.
- rwmj 7mo agoFor 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/ https://grid.iamkate.com/ Electricity is only a part of the whole energy sector, but it's relevant to this thread about EVs.
- zejn 7mo agoYes, 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.
- ZeroGravitas 7mo agoPartly, 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.
- tialaramex 7mo agoA quarter of a century ago, the first quarter of 2001, Britain used 39 TWh of coal electrical generation, 36 TWh of gas and 21 TWh of nuclear. Today we're lot more energy efficient†, and the renewables made more than 25 TWh, but nuclear is now less than 10 TWh, we of course no longer burn coal, which leaves 30 TWh of gas still and we have a lot more imports (because we have a lot more interconnect, which is also a form of energy security) † For example back then we mostly used incandescent light bulbs! And a lot of people still used CRT televisions back then!
- gib444 7mo agoIf 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
- drnick1 7mo agoElectric cars aren't cheap, and electricity prices are very high in Europe.
- toomuchtodo 7mo agoBYD EVs are affordable. Electricity will get cheaper with more renewables, oil will not.
- haunter 7mo agoDefine 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
- toomuchtodo 7mo ago> 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-energy-crisis-hormuz/ 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-30-40-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/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 https://archive.today/5OhRI - March 22nd, 2026
- 7952 7mo agoNew 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.
- b65e8bee43c2ed0 7mo agoEurope has no (meaningful amounts of economically viable to extract) lithium either.
- philipkglass 7mo ago"Lithium mining commences in Finland" https://www.electrive.com/2026/02/12/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.
- helsinkiandrew 7mo agoEurope has massive lithium reserves in Germany, Serbia, Portugal and ukraine but perhaps more importantly it also has friendly relations with other countries with reserves
- b65e8bee43c2ed0 7mo agoif those reserves were economically viable to extract, they would be already being extracted.
- legulere 7mo agoLike this? https://www.thinkgeoenergy.com/vulcan-energy-achieves-drilling-and-permitting-milestones-at-geothermal-lithium-project-in-germany/?amp=1 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.
- youngtaff 7mo agoOr this https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/feb/26/cornwall-new-geothermal-project-launches https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/feb/26/cornwall...
- MattGaiser 7mo agoEh, 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.
- zejn 7mo agoThe 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.
- lostlogin 7mo agoRaising the price of fuel will do wonders for solving that.
- throwawaytea 7mo agoIn 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.
- fc417fc802 7mo agoI knew the CA grid was in a bad place but wow. What are you paying per kWh?
- throwawaytea 7mo ago$0.44 A first gen Volt takes 10.3kwh. It also uses electricity to cool the batteries while charging. If you leave it plugged in one a hot day it will cool the battery just for health overall but I'll ignore that. Then, add in the losses on the charge conversions. It easily takes 11kwh to charge a Volt. It'll go about 35 miles in the summer on that charge, and more like 28 in the winter. It also gets 35 mpg on gasoline, while providing free heat in the winter from the gas engine heat, and for most of the last few years was doing this for $3.50-$4 a gallon. There are people on Southern California/San Diego that pay more. Over there people say the Prius Prime is WAY cheaper to operate on gas because it gets 50mpg gasoline. I've even heard people running their home off gasoline because it's cheaper but that would require an impressive gas generator to do long term.
- leonidasrup 7mo agoEurope 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#Messmer_Plan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_France#Messme...
- mono442 7mo agoThe 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.
- leonidasrup 7mo agoBecause 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/olkiluoto-3 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/Mochovce-3 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/Watts-Bar-2 https://world-nuclear.org/nuclear-reactor-database/details/W...
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- ajsnigrutin 7mo agoThe local farmers came with 1000l+ tanks for diesel, foreigners with multiple gas cans, etc., and the local logistics couldn't handle the pressure.
- hirako2000 7mo agoCould also be that they didn't have sufficient reserve and would rather blame hijackers?
- ajsnigrutin 7mo agoThey'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-je-natankal-za-1500-evrov-dizla-456276 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.
- hirako2000 7mo agoRest assured the toilet papers fiasco didn't only affect this corner of the world.
- trinix912 7mo agoYes. 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.
- margalabargala 7mo agoForeigners 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.
- amarcheschi 7mo agoAlso https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/slovakia-diesel-higher-foreign-drivers-b2944567.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/slovakia-die...
- bhokbah 7mo ago50 liters per day...
- TacticalCoder 7mo agoThose 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.
- kpil 7mo agoThe 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.
- varispeed 7mo ago[flagged]
- reader9274 7mo agoAh yes, shared fuel resources controlled by the government. Sociafluel
- gpm 7mo agoSo... why is fuel 25% cheaper in Slovenia than in the neighbouring country while Solvenia is simultaneously having issues with running out of fuel? Seems like the obvious solution is to raise prices so people stop driving to your country (wasting fuel, ironically) to take your cheap fuel instead of just paying for the fuel in their own country. More than that it's a solution the free market would actually find on its own...
- trinix912 7mo agoWe 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.
- jopsen 7mo agoSubsidizing 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.
- trinix912 7mo agoLifting 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.
- SirHumphrey 7mo agoThere was an election recently and it’s possible there will soon be another… That’s why the fuel is so cheap.
- zejn 7mo ago
- SirensOfTitan 7mo agoScanning 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-energy-crisis-hormuz/ https://thedispatch.com/newsletter/dispatch-energy/iran-war-... 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 11 days of LNG storage--meaning it may have to consider limiting industrial electricity use if things persist. I will clarify based on a reply, this doesn't mean they'll run out in that time, but that they have limited runway that will have deleterious effects as time goes on: > 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. Even if the Strait saw normal traffic today (and Iran is incentivized and well-positioned to keep it closed for a while), it would take quite a while to recover lost supply. Iran continues to employ a tit-for-tat strategy and Israel just targeted steel industry in the country -- I'm not even taking into account more deliberate damage to energy infrastructure in the Mid east. This is a scary crisis wherein the most movable actor (the US) is not going to accept Iran's terms. It could collapse the global economy, and that crucially includes the AI industry this forum loves to focus on almost exclusively. The US and the majority of the west has essentially no fiscal room compared to the comparably lesser 1970s crises either. 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.
- MattGaiser 7mo ago> 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.
- perching_aix 7mo ago50L/day - with no other limits - sounds like a lot. Are there really fuel tourists coming in en masse and taking more than this? With zero tracking of enforcement whatsoever, people will just hit up a few different nearby gas stations instead of one anyways and that's it.
- throwawaytea 7mo agoHey man,sometimes you just have to drive 400 miles a day, everyday.
- cucumber3732842 7mo agoThat was me today, Thursday, Monday and last Friday though I suppose a couple of them were "only" 300 miles. I'm not normal though. And if I gave a crap about western white collar standards for acceptable vehicle loading I'd have had to do it all twice or take a vehicle that uses twice the fuel lol.
- throwawaytea 7mo agoIm with you, I tow some goofy things with a sedan and a custom tow hitch I welded and installed. But in general terms, limiting people to top 1% of travel distances daily in an emergency is pretty mild.
- marginalia_nu 7mo agoWell if you have regulated fuel prices, and free trade and travel with neighboring countries (the whole point of the EU), you're gonna see arbitrage if those countries aren't regulating fuel prices. Options are to either un-regulate the prices, or ration the fuel sales.
- jmclnx 7mo agoI do not understand this rationing scheme. Say I live in Austria and it is a short ride to a Slovenia Station. Can buy as much gas as I want, but citizens in Slovenia are limited ? That does not seem right.
- svilen_dobrev 7mo agoBulgaria.. today.. 95 gasoline , on nearest OMV station = ~~ 1.42E/liter (more prices at [0] : 1.26-2.15E) https://fuelo.net/cheap/where?lang=bg&order=cheap&fuel_type=gasoline&brand=all&country=bg&province=3&city=all https://fuelo.net/cheap/where?lang=bg&order=cheap&fuel_type=... come here, the water is fine :)
- jeremie_strand 7mo ago[flagged]
- dismalaf 7mo agoI bet everyone around the world is glad that Canada decided virtue signalling is more important than exporting LNG and oil.
- properbrew 7mo agoNote that this looks to have been a few days ago: > 23 March 2026
- lemoncookiechip 7mo agoIf 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 addressing from the ground and takes years and years with full investment. The boats, the planes require fuel. The industrial machinery requires fuel. We need to address it from the ground up and it's not an easy feat. We should 100% invest and diversify energy production, but the reality is that even if we had a surplus of renewable energy on the grid, that wouldn't save a country because there are too many cogs that need oil right now that need replacing.
- legulere 7mo agoIt’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.
- saulpw 7mo agoThey were saying, if you want to see the end state of lack of oil. Like how would it look if your oil spigot were turned off? A lot of people haven't thought about it.
- tsoukase 7mo agoSlovenia is 165km wide and 265km long so with 50lit gas tank your are out of the country. It's only the same day back and forth that is limited by this measure. It probably has nothing to do with energy saving or renewable push.
- gib444 7mo agoThis is just like COVID where countries watch other countries react and just go "huh would you look at that" and go back to their lunch. In the UK there is currently a feels like temperature of -8C (early morning) and yesterday reached a dizzying high of 4c. Spring is stubbornly in hiding still. The inflationary crisis will be immense as it's building off the previous one which didn't really go away
- wtmt 7mo agoMeanwhile in India, people are queuing up to get LPG cylinders (cooking gas) and the government is making similar statements as quoted in this article that there are no shortages. Pump prices of petrol and diesel in India are being kept the same by reducing taxes since there are some key state elections next month and the ruling party of the union government doesn’t want to hurt its chances. Expect fuel prices in India to go up in May and the following months, even though procurement from Russia is increasing. With a fertilizer shortage, the consequences of this war are making things tougher and tougher for common people everywhere.
- xinayder 7mo agoEr, Hungary had implemented this back in 2022/23 when the Ukraine war started. The title makes it look like it's the very first country to restrict how much fuel you can buy in one go.