Fueling the rising costs for everyone

Fuel prices are rising throughout the world due to Tr*mp’s war against Iran, and obviously New Zealand’s fuel prices are rising fast, too. A couple days ago, an economist predicted that petrol prices could pass $4 per litre (roughly US$8.81 per US gallon). I think our prices will probably reach that point in maybe a week.

Here's why I say that: Late yesterday afternoon, I used the Gaspy App to look at prices at around 50 petrol stations within a relatively short drive from my house. The cheapest price for 91 was $2.93 per litre (three stations), and the highest price was $3.26 per litre. This evening, the cheapest price was $3.14 per litre (one station), and the highest price was $3.40—that’s around 24 hours later. It will keep rising.

Despite being late to take the situation seriously, the current NZ government is starting to talk about “worst case scenario” solutions. They claim NZ has seven weeks of fuel supply, counting both what’s here and what’s on the way, but experts in the industry estimate it’s actually around five weeks. One specific—and big—problem is that around 47% of NZ’s refined fuel comes from Korea, and they’ve talked about suspending exports, and if they do, this situation could get serious fast.

The government’s first step will be to work with partner countries overseas to try to find alternative sources of fuel, and they’re talking about temporarily relaxing fuel standards (I think, but don’t know, that they mean things like allowing higher levels of Sulfur in diesel). They also are working on a series of escalating restrictions on sales (to prioritise essential users, like emergency services and truckers shipping food to supermarkets) that they could use, if that becomes necessary—along with security guards at petrol stations.

I’m extremely lucky in that I don’t need to drive much or far, so this shouldn’t affect me for a while. Sales restrictions, if they happen, would obviously affect me, too, but, like everyone else, rising prices will increasingly mean I won’t drive anywhere unless I have to.

However, we'll all share the pain of fast-rising fuel prices because EVERYTHING we need to buy will become more expensive, including groceries, which are already at too-high prices—and, of course, farmers need fuel to grow and harvest our food (plus fertiliser may be hard to obtain). We’ve also been warned that because of all the uncertainties, there could be fuel surcharges added to anything delivered directly to us. Could? Make that there will be.

Related to that, I realised recently that this situation could mean that the guy who mows my front lawn may raise his prices. However, he recently cut back to mowing every other week, so even if he raises his prices, I should still be paying less per month than when he was mowing weekly. Like I said, I’m lucky.

No one knows how this will play out, or when the war will end. It certainly doesn’t help that the USA has a government that doesn’t have a clue what it’s doing, and the Republican politicians clearly have no idea whatsoever how to bring their war to an end. So, things right now are serious and getting worse, but they're not yet dire—emphasis on yet.

New Zealand is as vulnerable as any other country, and our own “Coalition of Chaos” government hasn’t exactly been inspiring confidence that they know what to do. Even so, I’m not willing to jump on the panic wagon about all this. First, there’s absolutely nothing I can do about the cause of all this turmoil. All I can do is manage what’s within my control, and I’m definitely doing that.

But, seriously, isn’t it about time we finally got to have some precedented times?!!!