2026 Fuel Prices & Security of Supply

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#3476553 1-Apr-2026 12:44

fastbike:

If you have not been able to organise your life affairs - home, employment, investments - and got caught short here because it costs you $50 more per week to fill your tank then you've not been paying attention. Take this as a wake up call.

If you're not living locally, and driving an EV for when you need additional range, then don't come crying. We've lived in the same universe.

Spoken from a place of absolute privileged ignorance.

What about those on minimum wage & low fixed incomes, unable to afford to live locally, unable to access funds to buy an EV, no alternative options to having to rely on an ageing fossil fuel vehicle, and, for reasons totally beyond their control, unable to find $50 a week to meet essential transport costs - let alone the near-term rapid inflationary impact on living essentials.

geoffwnz

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#3476561 1-Apr-2026 12:53

dafman:

fastbike:

If you have not been able to organise your life affairs - home, employment, investments - and got caught short here because it costs you $50 more per week to fill your tank then you've not been paying attention. Take this as a wake up call.

If you're not living locally, and driving an EV for when you need additional range, then don't come crying. We've lived in the same universe.

Spoken from a place of absolute privileged ignorance.

What about those on minimum wage & low fixed incomes, unable to afford to live locally, unable to access funds to buy an EV, no alternative options to having to rely on an ageing fossil fuel vehicle, and, for reasons totally beyond their control, unable to find $50 a week to meet essential transport costs - let alone the near-term rapid inflationary impact on living essentials.

Even if you are "Wealthy and sorted", the sheer speed at which the cost of, first, fuel, and subsequently "everything else" has and will continue to ramp up is going to have a significant impact on the weekly budget.

MotorDrive Rallying

kangaroo13

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#3476562 1-Apr-2026 12:56

SaltyNZ:

. You're the president of South Korea. Your citizens - the ones you are sworn by oath to serve - are screaming as the economy collapses due to fuel shortages. Will you

Send a bunch of fuel to New Zealand, further worsening your own economic situation and chances of being re-elected
Refund the tiny amount of money to New Zealand, keep the fuel for yourself, blush and apologise if and when the time comes that everything is back to normal

I think it's going to be pretty hard to choose (1).

Yes. Though, I offer as something of a counter-example, the natural gas crisis in Australia. There is a domestic shortage, and the cost is high to Australian consumers. Meanwhile, Australia also happens to be the world's biggest exporter of LNG (closely contested with Qatar). Although complex, the root causes can be summaried by a combination of privitisation/deregulation of the energy sector plus huge long term international contracts that are hard (expensive) to get out of.

It is a political hot potato, and has influenced past elections, and is likely to do so again.

fastbike

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#3476566 1-Apr-2026 12:59

I don't think it is a matter of being optimistic or pessimistic. Just being realistic is good enough for me.

I see nothing that this government is currently doing as preparing us for the inevitable rationing. We have existing social inequalities being stretched out even more as fuel costs soar. Inflation will inevitably increase and wages will be tamped down to try to put the genie of more expensive energy back in the box.

The article I linked to yesterday fills in a lot of the gaps in the what-if scenarios. To summarise

The current war is best understood as the product of a fairly extreme gamble .. As we’re going to see, this was not a super-well-planned-out affair.

The gamble was this: that the Iranian regime was weak enough that a solid blow, delivered primarily from the air, picking off key leaders, could cause it to collapse. For the United States, the hope seems to have been that a transition could then be managed to leaders perhaps associated with the regime but who would be significantly more pliant, along the lines of the regime change operation performed in Venezuela that put Delcy Rodriguez in power. By contrast, Israel seems to have been content to simply collapse the Iranian regime and replace it with nothing. That outcome would be – as we’ll see – robustly bad for a huge range of regional and global actors, including the United States, and it is not at all clear to me that the current administration understood how deeply their interests and Israel’s diverged here.

There's a lot more in the article - the writer has subject matter expertise in this area - talks about the trap that Israel created and the US just walked straight into

The result is a fairly classic escalation trap: once the conflict starts, it is extremely costly for either side to ever back down, which ensures that the conflict continues long past it being in the interests of either party. Every day this war goes on make both the United States and Iran weaker, poorer and less secure but it is very hard for either side to back down because there are huge costs connected to being the party that backs down. So both sides ‘escalate to de-escalate’ (this phrase is generally as foolish as it sounds), intensifying the conflict in an effort to hit hard enough to force the other guy to blink first. But since neither party can back down unilaterally and survive politically, there’s practically no amount of pain that can force them to do so.

He concludes

And you may then ask, here at the end: if I am saying that Iran is being hammered, that they are suffering huge costs, how can I also be suggesting that the United States is on some level losing?

And the answer is simple: it is not possible for two sides to both win a war. But it is absolutely possible for both sides to lose; mutual ruin is an option. Every actor involved in this war – the United States, Iran, arguably Israel, the Gulf states, the rest of the energy-using world – is on net poorer, more vulnerable, more resource-precarious as a result.

So you have been warned. Expecting a magical return to the situation that existed at the end of February is not about pessimism or optimism, it is plain simple delusion.

Read the article - it joins up a lot of dots.

Otautahi Christchurch

SaltyNZ

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#3476569 1-Apr-2026 13:05

kangaroo13:

SaltyNZ:

. You're the president of South Korea. Your citizens - the ones you are sworn by oath to serve - are screaming as the economy collapses due to fuel shortages. Will you

Send a bunch of fuel to New Zealand, further worsening your own economic situation and chances of being re-elected
Refund the tiny amount of money to New Zealand, keep the fuel for yourself, blush and apologise if and when the time comes that everything is back to normal

I think it's going to be pretty hard to choose (1).

Yes. Though, I offer as something of a counter-example, the natural gas crisis in Australia. There is a domestic shortage, and the cost is high to Australian consumers. Meanwhile, Australia also happens to be the world's biggest exporter of LNG (closely contested with Qatar). Although complex, the root causes can be summaried by a combination of privitisation/deregulation of the energy sector plus huge long term international contracts that are hard (expensive) to get out of.

It is a political hot potato, and has influenced past elections, and is likely to do so again.

I take your point, and it is a fair one. But I don't think we're actually in the crisis yet. Right now, there's still plenty of fuel around ... the last of the ships to leave the Strait heading for Asia are only expected to arrive in the next couple of days. So the actual crisis is still several weeks away. Right now we're just getting the warning signs. How much it will cost to get out of a contract to supply something you don't have (because SK relies on Middle Eastern imports) will soon be moot.

Australian LNG is slightly different - I agree they are likely to export whatever they can politically get away with for extortionate prices for as long as they can. But most homes and vehicles don't run on LPG in Australia. You might annoy some people wanting to have a barbecue. In any case the impact will be far less serious for Australia to export LNG and make bank while they can (cf. New Zealand butter prices!) than for SK to export fuel.

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mudguard

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#3476571 1-Apr-2026 13:09

fastbike:

I don't think it is a matter of being optimistic or pessimistic. Just being realistic is good enough for me.

Doesn't mean it's easy for someone to replace their ICE car with an EV though. At bare minimum you've got to be able to park it close to your house. I haven't done the maths, but if say your average South Auckland user of a multi seat vehicle that's at least ten years old and potentially on tick still. Switching to EV may as will be equal to winning Lotto.

We have been pondering it. I've had a change of job which has left me with a modern car that no longer gets driven, I cannot justify the maths on spending on an EV even with petrol increasing.

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DjShadow

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#3476573 1-Apr-2026 13:13

There is a banner on ABC News Australia indicating the Australian PM is going to address the nation at 7pm AEDT tonight, can only assume if there is a policy shift then that will result in us reacting by moving to Level 2

cddt

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#3476576 1-Apr-2026 13:31

fastbike:

And the answer is simple: it is not possible for two sides to both win a war. But it is absolutely possible for both sides to lose; mutual ruin is an option. Every actor involved in this war – the United States, Iran, arguably Israel, the Gulf states, the rest of the energy-using world – is on net poorer, more vulnerable, more resource-precarious as a result.

There's a reason the phrase "Pyrrhic victory" has been used for more than two thousand years...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyrrhic_victory

wellygary

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#3476577 1-Apr-2026 13:35

DjShadow:

There is a banner on ABC News Australia indicating the Australian PM is going to address the nation at 7pm AEDT tonight, can only assume if there is a policy shift then that will result in us reacting by moving to Level 2

But a move in Australia is only a trigger for NZ to have a meeting....

I suspect they won't do anything until at least tomorrow afternoon (2pm) when his orange-ness addresses the American people to"provide an important update on Iran"

https://ca.news.yahoo.com/donald-trump-primetime-address-war-000522178.html

kangaroo13

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#3476578 1-Apr-2026 13:37

SaltyNZ:

Australian LNG is slightly different - I agree they are likely to export whatever they can politically get away with for extortionate prices for as long as they can. But most homes and vehicles don't run on LPG in Australia. You might annoy some people wanting to have a barbecue. In any case the impact will be far less serious for Australia to export LNG and make bank while they can (cf. New Zealand butter prices!) than for SK to export fuel.

Just to be clear - while the export is in the form of LNG, this has an impact on domestic natural gas supply (not just LNG bottles for BBQs). The issue comes back to supply contracts to major natural gas processing plants in Queensland for the LNG export market.

Natural gas is piped up most streets of major cities. A lot of people power their houses using natural gas (hot water, cooking and space heating), so rising prices has a huge cost of living impact on many. This is in competition to suppling natural gas to the LNG plants.

MadEngineer

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#3476587 1-Apr-2026 14:12

I can't help wonder how the world would react to NZ struggling to feed the global demand for our dairy, meat, wood and aluminium as a result of insufficient fuel. China I'm sure would miss our Kiwifruit

You're not on Atlantis anymore, Duncan Idaho.

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richms

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#3476588 1-Apr-2026 14:15

MadEngineer:

I can't help wonder how the world would react to NZ struggling to feed the global demand for our dairy, meat, wood and aluminium as a result of insufficient fuel. China I'm sure would miss our Kiwifruit

Indifference would be my guess.

Richard rich.ms

Handle9

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#3476590 1-Apr-2026 14:16

MadEngineer:

I can't help wonder how the world would react to NZ struggling to feed the global demand for our dairy, meat, wood and aluminium as a result of insufficient fuel. China I'm sure would miss our Kiwifruit

The world would shrug and get on with their day.

wellygary

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#3476593 1-Apr-2026 14:20

MadEngineer:

I can't help wonder how the world would react to NZ struggling to feed the global demand for our dairy, meat, wood and aluminium as a result of insufficient fuel. China I'm sure would miss our Kiwifruit

Given that a good chunk of global aluminium production in the gulf is either Paused/Damages/Destroyed/Force Mejeured

The stuff coming out of Tiwai is highly sought after (especially the HPA).... and most of its limited Diesel consumption is trucking it down to the Docks...so it should be able to continue OK..

https://www.straitstimes.com/world/middle-east/bahrains-alba-assesses-damage-after-iran-strikes-aluminium-plants

PolicyGuy

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#3476604 1-Apr-2026 14:55

SaltyNZ:

I take your point, and it is a fair one. But I don't think we're actually in the crisis yet. Right now, there's still plenty of fuel around ... the last of the ships to leave the Strait heading for Asia are only expected to arrive in the next couple of days. So the actual crisis is still several weeks away. Right now we're just getting the warning signs. How much it will cost to get out of a contract to supply something you don't have (because SK relies on Middle Eastern imports) will soon be moot.

According to Bernard Hickey from The Kākā

April 20 is D-Day for the last ship. Australasia is expected to receive its last delivery of fuel refined from Middle East crude that came out of the Persian Gulf before [the war started] by around April 20.

😨

Further reading (https://thespinoff.co.nz/politics/01-04-2026/the-new-zealand-fuel-crisis-laid-bare-in-nine-simple-charts) says that Hickey's prediction is derived from this map "Oil flows from the Persian Gulf and southeast Asia. Source: JP Morgan Commodities Research":

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