Fuel Crisis Looming?

17/12/10 -- There's a fuel crisis coming, or indeed one may already be here, according to the Telegraph (clicky clicky big boy).

Normally I'd dismiss that as media scaremongering. They like to creep up behind unsuspecting mongers and go BOOOO! the papers don't they? The article points out that "rural schools and hospitals, also depend on oil for heat". Well as the schools are all closing today anyway, maybe the hospitals can pop round and syphon some off you might think.

More than one person mentioned sees the astonishing recent price spike as blatant profiteering. It certainly isn't backed up by the price of crude oil which has been relatively stable between USD80-90/barrel since September. If we have a look at a chart for heating oil in the UK however, we see a meteoric rise since the start of the month:



So what is going on? One or two local petrol stations round by me DO seem to have had the "petrol pump says no" stickers out on a lot of their pumps for two or three weeks now.

I've got an uneasy feeling that this isn't scaremongering somehow. MrsN#3 does like her smellies at Christmastime, I wonder how this year's very expensive 500 ml Diesel atomiser spray is going to go down?