Britain has today followed the U.S. and banned Russian oil imports as drivers started queuing for fuel after being hit by the steepest weekly hike in fuel prices in more than 18 years due to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine – with prices expected to keep rising. The Mail has more.
Oil prices are rising at an alarming rate sparking warnings that petrol could soon hit £2 a litre – taking the cost of an average tank to more than £100 – an increase of around £17.
Unleaded hit an average record of £1.55 a litre yesterday, with industry sources saying it was likely to rise to £1.75 by next week as 5p is being added to the price every 24 hours in some areas. But prices at some forecourts are already pushing £1.80.
Motorists queued outside a Sainsbury’s petrol station in Cambridge today as they rushed to fill up cars and jerry cans before petrol prices increase even further. There were also long lines at the pumps at a Tesco in neighbouring Suffolk. On social media there were also reports of queues at supermarket pumps in Lancashire.
U.S. President Joe Biden has decided to ban Russian oil imports, toughening the toll on Russia’s economy in retaliation for its invasion of Ukraine, according to a person familiar with the matter, and the European Union this week will commit to phasing out its reliance on Russia for energy needs as soon as possible.
Filling the void without crippling EU economies will likely take some time – natural gas from Russia accounts for one-third of Europe’s consumption of the fossil fuel.
The White House said Biden would announce on Tuesday “actions to continue to hold Russia accountable for its unprovoked and unjustified war on Ukraine”.
The U.S. does not import Russian natural gas.
Boris Johnson has said the move to ban Russian oil and gas will punish Vladimir Putin’s regime but will be introduced in a way that “won’t affect” U.K. businesses.
Speaking to broadcasters, the Prime Minister said: “The U.K. is less exposed (than European allies) but clearly we do have diesel that comes from Russia and we can’t move overnight.
“But we can certainly do it and we can do it in a way that doesn’t disrupt supply, that ensures we have substitute supplies on stream in an orderly way and in a timetable that won’t affect U.K. business, won’t affect U.K. manufacturing, road haulage or other parts of our industry but will punish the regime of Vladimir Putin.”
Business and Energy Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng today revealed that the U.K. would “phase out the import of Russian oil and oil products by the end of 2022”.
He added: “This transition will give the market, businesses and supply chains more than enough time to replace Russian imports – which make up 8% of U.K. demand.
“Businesses should use this year to ensure a smooth transition so that consumers will not be affected. The Government will also work with companies through a new Taskforce on Oil to support them to make use of this period in finding alternative supplies.
“The U.K. is a significant producer of oil and oil products, plus we hold significant reserves.”
He added that the market has “already begun to ostracise Russian oil, with nearly 70% of it currently unable to find a buyer”.
“Finally, while the U.K. is not dependent on Russian natural gas – 4% of our supply – I am exploring options to end this altogether,” he wrote.
The U.K. is planning to buy more oil from the U.S., Saudi Arabia and the Middle East instead, but wants nine months to sort out the deals.
The move is expected to be announced this afternoon and will lay out the ban and its phase-in period, which is expected to last about a year to try to stop people panic-buying fuel at a time when energy prices are rocketing.
There will not be a ban on Russian gas – but this is still under discussion within the Government. U.S. President Joe Biden has decided he will ban Russian oil and gas immediately.
It came as Rishi Sunak was urged to put the City of London on a ‘semi-wartime setting’ amid fears the Ukraine conflict could spill further into Europe. The Centre for Economics and Business Research has predicted that GDP growth this year will be slashed from 4.2% to 1.9% in 2022 and down to zero in 2023.
Are we absolutely sure this is a good idea and in line with our core strategic objectives? Drastically cutting oil and gas imports during an energy crisis and scrambling around for alternatives? Dropping GDP growth to zero in the wake of a very costly pandemic? Have we properly costed our interventions and assessed them against our strategic interests?
Worth reading in full.
Discussion
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“Have we properly costed our interventions and assessed them against our strategic interests?”
Did we properly cost COVID interventions and assess them against overall good for the country? No. So nothing’s changed.
Something must be done!!! This is something, so let’s do it!!!
Knee-jerk government.
UK bans Russian oil, prices surge upwards, but it’s Putin’s fault!
This government is Insane!
Does anyone in the Uk think this is a senseless decision? Do our MP’s who represent us have any say? Or are Brits meant to swallow this poor decision making and live or die with the consequences? It does not make sense.
Someone needs to sit down with Johnson and have a serious chat. Banning oil or gas from Russia will only destroy this country. Honestly, he cannot be that stupid. Or can he?
There are no bounds to Bunter’s stupidity.
Bunter keeps his brains in his pants.
‘Have we properly costed our interventions and assessed them against our strategic interests?’
You mean like ‘we’ properly costed our interventions in the Middle-East; costed environmentalism/climate change; costed Made In Government CoVid calamity?
i shall be disappointed if the question isn’t rhetorical.
Sorry to disappoint, but costings and research are something this governments doesn’t do. Its all about feelings and emotions..
How can Boris stand there with a straight face and claim they are going to introduce a ban on Russian oil but are going to do it in such a way as to not affect businesses when the price of petrol is already going up every 24 hours?
… also….
Do the station forecourts receive a new delivery every day? Because that is the only way prices should be changing for the fuel already bought and paid for by the petrol stations…..All of this stinks of managed forced social change.
I agree.
Great move Johnson, punch us all in the face to teach Putin a lesson
In answer to the questions at the end of the article
No
No
No
And NO!
We have been infantalised. It’s OK for Ukraine to starve and bomb the people of the Donbas but its not OK for Russia to take out WMD. It’s OK for America to bomb the living daylights out of Syria but it’s not OK for the Syrian people to ask Russia and Iran for help.
It’s now OK for Europe and America to do everything in their power to destroy Russia whilst at the same time destroying their own nations and the majority of us will blame Russia. This truly is a mad bad world we are living in and I want nothing to do with it. The psychopaths that are engineering this Great Reset care not a jot for us. They are playground bullies and we are too scared to speak the truth and fight back.
‘the majority of us will blame Russia’ : yep – even here there are some who have fallen into this propaganda trap!
I give up!
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Our allies in Saudi Arabia won’t increase production. We have a crazy energy policy in the UK, likewise in America.. Ever thought this is all orchestrated to impoverished us
“Pandemonium at the pumps”. An attractive headline, but actually the other day there wasn’t one at my local branch of ASDA; E10 petrol @148.7 p/litre – 119.7 a year ago, or about 24% up. It’s quite easy to create short term panics via the MSM though. Don’t join the club.
Tut tut JohnK,
You have respect for an engine feeding 10% corn.
“We have substitute supplies on stream in an orderly way and in a timetable that won’t affect U.K. business, won’t affect U.K. manufacturing, road haulage or other parts of our industry”
Well, it’s affecting pretty much the entire population. And this comes right on top of 2 years of nonstop terrorizing of pretty much the entire population of pretty much everywhere.
I wonder…are they (pretty much the entire population of pretty much everywhere) starting to suspect that something ain’t quite right yet? (rhetorical)
It’s an absolutely ludicrous idea and it’s happening because the UK politicians only consider what the Americans tell them to do, not what the UK voting public wants them to do.
This is all about the richest of the rich making fortunes at the expense of the honest majority.
The rich will have loaded up late last autumn on wheat, oil, gas, metals etc.
They’ll have doubled their money in three months, as near as dammit.
Of course they want the prices to skyrocket: that’s gonna make them fortunes!
Dr Will writes:
“Have we properly costed our interventions and assessed them against our strategic interests?”
Evidently not but as nothing was costed for the C1984 Scamdemic why should we expect our treacherous parliament to do things differently for stage two of the reset?
They have had years to cost NetZero, but daren’t do it.
Thankfully Professor Michael Kelly has done it for them and the cost to each household in the UK will be anywhere between £150,000 to £450,000 by 2050.
That’s only £5,300 to £16,000 every household has to find every year for the next 22 years. Then there’s increased Taxation on top to pay for all the subsidies on Heat Pumps, EV’s etc.
That doesn’t include the cost of council housing within that which private householders must subsidise, nor the increased cost of goods to cover the cost of alterations to factories and fleets of EV’s.
Nor does it account for inflation, those are todays prices. In 28 years time those numbers will be an awful lot higher.
If they want to peddle the mantra the NetZero is all about the children then why don’t they consult the children who will be saddled with all this expense, and the lost inheritance many will lose from their parents labouring under this burden.
They will also be saddled with student debt. But then I doubt any of them will be going to university because it will be just unaffordable.
And buying a house?… Read more »
I could be wrong here but I think that up until 2020 the biggest supplier of crude oil to the UK was Norway followed by the USA – then it was Russia which supplies the UK with less than a quarter of that supplied by Norway and around a third of that supplied by the USA – Nigeria supplies the UK with almost as much oil as the Russians.
Correct on Norway being biggest supplier to UK.
But new supply/demand balance applies to the whole market, so drives up prices.
It came as Rishi Sunak was urged to put the City of London on a ‘semi-wartime setting’
What does that even mean? Looks like more of the same nudging to try to create some sort of national unity and allow Johnson to do his best Churchill impression. Well, it ain’t going to work with a lot of us. I’ve never before regarded the whole political class (and the media) with the level of complete,absolute contempt which I hold for them now. Two years of the Covidian bollox,and now all this anti-Russia tub-thumping and all these claims that the situation is unprovoked and completely unexpected. Clearly they are relying on the dumb public swallowing it all, as they did with the Covidian bollox.
Anyone who is vaguely aware of the Ukraine situation will be aware that this has been brewing for years. NATO have been poking the bear with a stick repeatedly, then pretend to be surprised when the bear eventually turns on them. And as for the hypocrisy – it’s off the scale. In this situation the US-sphere would have done the same if the boot was on the other foot – and probably done it earlier and more violently… Read more »
Well, Johnson does indeed do a pretty good Churchill impression – sadly of the nodding dog as seen on TV!
Anyone who is vaguely aware of the Ukraine situation will be aware that this has been brewing for years. NATO have been poking the bear with a stick repeatedly, then pretend to be surprised when the bear eventually turns on them.
This doesn’t hold water: The position of the NATO relative to Russia has been unchanged for the last 18 years. And it’s not a NATO country that’s being attacked. In other words, the supposed cause doesn’t exist and neither does the supposed effect.
And the sheep are already queueing, more political driven crisis FFS. This time last year I paid 33p per liter, the 88p per Liter I just paid for heating oil is going to look cheap soon too.
Controlled demolition of the economy, welcome the great reset
Aren’t sanctions supposed to hurt the other guy, not us?
Define “us”.
Fair point.
I suppose the whole point of these sanctions must be to hurt us, the UK public, because they’re created by the same government which has spent the last two years trying to kill us with lockdowns, masks and fake vaccines.
Stopping a trade, is what sanctions actually are. A trade normally benefits both parties, so stopping it gives a loss to both parties.
It only creates a loss if the goods can’t be sold/sourced to/from other places, if they can then it only creates an inconvenience, and a temporary one at that.
“steepest weekly hike in fuel prices in more than 18 years due to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine”
No – it is not due to this! It is due to government sanctions.
Lockdown was not due to covid but due to government actions.
Can we please be clear about the causes for these things!
not forgetting that at least half the price is tax so it’s totally in the government’s power to reduce the cost to consumers.
The tax element is an absolute value, so the proportion will change as the price changes
The ‘tax’ element is fixed – VaT is 20% on most fuels The ‘duty’ element is 57.95 pence per litre on petrol, diesel, biodiesel and bioethenol, so it is the duty that has the varying proportion, not the Tax.
Currently then, 58p of the ~£1.60 pump price is duty and 32p is tax (because you pay VaT on the duty as well)…thats 90p out of £1.60 making it 56% of the price goes to the government……but they are doing all they can to alleviate the pain at the pumps……..yeh…right.
Forgot to add source
https://www.gov.uk/tax-on-shopping/fuel-duty
That would mean acknowledging that all the problems result from decisions which are entirely within the control of our governemt. And admitting that would never do!
The deflection method is tried and tested now – how many times and in how many places have you seen and heard “Due to the Pandemic…”, usually prefacing an order not to do something (or to do something pointless), or as an excuse for crap service fromm companies. And the sheep just accept it every time.
Did you know that much of the market had already stopped buying russian oil.
A sort of self sanctioning..
Damn right.
After 2 years of totally f***ing the economy and spunking magic money all over the place why do you think they would start now?
2 years? More like 2 decades.
30 years of impending NetZero haven’t been costed yet in the UK, far less a few years of increasing inflation and energy prices.
Our government can’t use an abacus far less a computer to figure out costs or options.
It’s like it’ll all disappear overnight once the war in Ukraine stops, we’ll import gas from America and Norway and they’ll give it to us at discount rates. My aunt Fanny……
Had Cuadrilla been allowed to begin fracking in 2019 instead of being sacrificed at the alter of climate change we would be well placed to simply increase production to materially affect the global gas price. As it is we could begin now and not surrender our energy independence, once again, to foreign actors.
Who knows what Biden will do. He’s convinced everyone in the west is obsessed with climate change and his virtue signalling will capture votes. He really doesn’t get that his poll rating are in the gutter right now because of his reckless lunge at woke popularity. Meanwhile the UK will suffer as his throttling of domestic fracking will create further shortages and continue to drive prices up.
But then socialists just don’t accept the concept of supply… Read more »
Yes there has been….
https://www.thegwpf.org/content/uploads/2022/03/Kelly-Net-Zero-Progress-Report.pdf?mc_cid=3de10e3d7a&mc_eid=4961da7cb1
Do doubt already been asked but it’s late.
What % of UK consumed oil came from Russia prior to the present ‘crisis’?
Not much ?
How about before the takeover of Crimea ?
Fake crisis a mile away.
However it’s global supply, take 8% out and some others won’t sell, supply and demand, less supply prices go up.
Consider how global markets work.
paul B did that just for us in the post above leek
Great. Just… great. Meanwhile, Boris is being told to stop exploiting local oil. It seems like the globalist, net-zero, stay at home strategy is going on as if nothing’s happened. Everything they do is aimed at getting people to give up the freedom conferred by their cars. Highway Code rule changes meant to make drivers second class road users. Widespread taxation of vehicles in city centres. Plans to introduce telematics units and tax drivers by the mile, taking away their privacy in one fell swoop. And now they’re doing all they can to drive petrol prices higher and higher.
And none of these things impact EV drivers, even though they are the ones that cause some of these issues. Vehicle tax is being increased because EV drivers aren’t being taxed, nor do they pay for petrol, so the government is seeing a deficit. Doesn’t matter that inflation has killed our incomes while prices are soaring, we don’t need to make more money. But the government mustn’t have less income! MP pockets must be kept nice and full.
I also bring up speed cameras. Catching speeding drivers is only their secondary purpose. Their primary purpose is to surveil all road traffic. They’ve been with us for over a decade.
All in the name of safety…
Yep, nothing safer than average speed cameras ensuring you keep your eyes on your speedo rather than the road ahead.
We all remember the news story from a while back of the lady that mounted a fake speed camera in her yard in order to trick drivers into slowing down. The police took it down because it was distracting drivers and creating a dangerous situation. Oh, the irony.
You may not have noticed but the prevalence of speed cameras dropped precipitously when the Conservative government ousted Blair. Many of them were burned out and just left or removed.
The M25 was littered with them under Blair, then they gradually disappeared. There are still some but most on the overhead gantry’s in every lane have gone.
Many have gone on my journey up the M11/A1/M6/M74 up to Scotland. There are the occasional speed camera vehicles on the overpasses but only two I can recall on my last journey there and back in February.
The police and government are not allowed to routinely surveil vehicle movements, it’s a gross invasion of privacy. I seem to remember it being raised in parliament some years ago and police records being inspected.
But not being allowed to do sommething, and not actually doing it, are two different things.
As the new government free for all Bill of Rights will make clear. Well actually it won’t make clear and that’s the point – catch all, ‘the wider public interest’ and ‘the public good.’
We are being thoroughly shafted.
Relevance?
ANPR
The so-called West has been imposing so-called economic sanctions on Russia since 2014. To exactly no avail. This is gesture politics at its worst and it ought to be stopped, not the least because it’s misdirected: Trade wars ultimatively harm ordinary people and not governments, at least not directly.
Generally ordinary people can select governments. In exceptional cases, ordinary people topple governments.
In certain political systems, some subset of the ordinary people may be involved in selecting political figureheads to some degree. But that’s neither generally nor naturally the case and it’s questionable into how much influence on actual politics this translates.
Some times, the population of a capital has succeeded in replacing a government. But that’s rare and attempts to do so usually go pear-shaped. And why would a population the so-called West has selected as target which is to be collaterally damaged to stage a political demonstration have much sympathies for it? That’s just morale bombing with different means and known to be ineffective.
“The U.K. is planning to buy more oil from…Saudi Arabia”
I’m assuming this is a different Saudi Arabia to the oppressive autocracy committing atrocities in Yemen?
Yes. The very same. The US has also decided to buy from Saudi Arabia. Funny, isn’t it.
Oh, and on a completely unrelated note: one of the Saudi terrorists being held in the US for 9/11 was just released back to Saudi Arabia. I’m sure there’s no connection there.
Well I assume war crimes and one of the worst human rights record in the world isn’t so bad when you’re one of the UK’s biggest customers for military equipment.
This virtue signalling moral high ground is awfully confusing though.
And a different Saudia Arabia from the one whose nationals flew planes into the Twin Towers.
Have all us sceptics now accepted that 17 shepherds evaded all security and brought America, including their airforce, to a standstill ?
I remember talking to a guy just a couple of years after 9/11. His old man was a journalist and flat out stated the whole thing was a false flag to precipitate war in the middle east so organisations like Halliburton would be given vast amounts of international money to rebuild nations.
Haliburton also payed vast amounts of tax and employed vast amounts of people and bought vast amounts of American made products in their rebuilding efforts.
I pretty well scoffed at him, then the war on terror got going and Iraq kicked off and, whilst I’m still not entirely convinced, it doesn’t half make me wonder.
Yes, pre-covid-era I scoffed. Now I don’t, at all. I’ve seen what “they” are capable of.
Watch the documentary on Amazon called 7, it is about the collapse of WTC7. You’ll understand then that there is no way that on 9/11, all THREE buildings were brought down by fire (only three multi-story buildings in the world have collapsed due to fires).
Was someone – Star, maybe? – asking for any proof of the existence of US biowarfare labs in Ukraine?
This seems to amount to a confession:
“The US is working with Ukraine to prevent biological research facilities from falling into the hands of Russians — Nuland”
https://twitter.com/RT_com/status/1501299583133134857
Chinese seem to be on the case as well. From the same twitter thread:
“Chinese Foreign Ministry: “The US has 336 labs in 30 countries under its control, including 26 in Ukraine alone. It should give a full account of its biological military activities at home and abroad and subject itself to multilateral verification.“”
https://twitter.com/CaoYi_MFA/status/1501201567478865922
We do import Russian coal, mainly for the industrial process to make concrete. Banning Russian coal won’t affect energy prices but it will affect materials costs in the construction industry.
Quos Deus vult perdere, prius dementat.
Interesting that this site seems to operate as a kind of rationality sieve.
First it attracted those who saw through the covid moral panic.
Then we had the BLM nonsense and a number of people took the hump at some of us here (and Toby atl) not respecting the sainted BLM, and a bunch declared their intention to leave because of the “racists” here.
Now we have people declaring that the place is just unacceptable because there’s not enough respect for the holy cause of finger-wagging at Russia for doing what our own leaders regularly do.
Interesting process.
What will the next moral panic be, and what will the terms of abuse be for those who decline to fall for it?
They don’t bother to define your ist anymore (racist, sexist, etc), “You ist” is enough in this high speed fast paced word.
“*ist”?
Perhaps the police could collect lists of people guilty of “non-crime *ism incidents”?
Domestic Terrorism – White Supremicists , quite a few suspects on this site I imagine.
“suspects” aka nonconformists to woke orthodoxy.
It will be common sense’ism shortly.
Mark,
Where does that leave the Global Warming Cultists?
As I noted previously, they’ve been at a relatively low intensity the past couple of years, mostly I think because they’ve essentially got all the elites kowtowing to them anyway.
If that changes and we start to see meaningful resistance to their dogmas, they might start to get hysterical again. (In larger numbers, I mean. Obviously; there’s always a few about).
Great post.
I originally fell for the Great Covid Panic in early March 2020. But I recovered before the end of the month. The wake up call for me was actually when my hands were covered in callouses from using hand sanitiser. It hit me that perhaps the so called remedies might be as bad as the illness. I then searched out more data points and realised that the whole thing was overblown and that the solutions were counter productive anyway.
I have then resolutely not fallen for the BLM and climate change hysterias. This evil Russia / saintly Ukraine hysteria is the worst so far because it has potential to lead to WW3.
Someone needs to do a study of the psychology of serial hysteria non converts. It might be interesting.