How we're just four months from Armageddon if Iran's oil war doesn't end: Bread riots. Starvation. Flights and cars banned. In a chilling investigation, ROSS CLARK reveals precisely how the nightmare will unfold
Blackouts. Economic paralysis. Empty supermarket shelves. Petrol and diesel rationing. Riots. As oil prices soar to unprecedented highs, Britain is on the brink of the worst energy crisis in our history.
The International Energy Agency has already described it as the worst-ever crisis to hit the world oil market. And experts across the political spectrum are warning this is just the beginning.
Prices have already passed $100 a barrel but Iran yesterday threatened to wage ‘full scale economic war’ by attacking major energy facilities across Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar in response to a missile strike on one of its major gas facilities by American and Israeli forces.
The Iranian goal is to send prices soaring to $200 per barrel. After the Russian invasion of Ukraine when the price reached $120, international panic followed as Europe feared shutdowns across the continent.
Oil is the lifeblood of the global economy. If it stops flowing, the inevitable effect is no different from what happens to the human body when it haemorrhages – dizziness, collapse, cardiac arrest and death.
The world’s stock markets are dependent on oil. So are international food supplies and most forms of transport. Without it, we can’t produce the electricity we need or heat our homes.
Simply talking about oil prices doubling, or hitting an arbitrary high of $200 a barrel, cannot convey the scale of the looming crisis.
As oil prices soar to unprecedented highs, Britain is on the brink of the worst energy crisis in our history, writes Ross Clark
Here, with predictions drawing on a range of warnings from experts, we map out what could happen if, by continuing to block the Strait of Hormuz, and wider disruption to oil production in the Middle East, Iran chokes energy exports to the West.
We have worked on the basis that the Government will be able to maintain some kind of control throughout. In reality, even that assumption might be too optimistic. Unless politicians can keep a grip, the chaos ahead could be too appalling to contemplate.
Day 1
Iran strikes deep into Saudi Arabia, paralysing much of the fossil fuel infrastructure of the world’s second biggest oil producer and preventing it from exporting oil via the Red Sea. This compounds the blockage in the Strait of Hormuz, the 30-mile-wide channel separating the Gulf from the Indian Ocean, and through which a fifth of the world’s oil production has to pass. The US and Israel immediately strike back against Iran’s oil assets, further reducing global production, strangling the supply to India and China and sending oil to $200 a barrel. Markets panic and share prices dive. Tens of billions are wiped off pensions overnight.
Day 2
Donald Trump tries to reassure Americans that high oil prices are ‘good’ for their nation, now that the US is the world’s largest oil producer. But ordinary Americans are having none of it. They can see the price of filling their pick-up trucks is soaring. Trump issues an executive order limiting the amount of oil that can be exported from the US to keep prices low there.
Day 3
Keir Starmer makes an emergency statement to the nation, explaining that with Europe unable to import all the oil it needs from either the US or the Middle East, it’s vital that ‘people do not panic’. His message triggers the opposite effect. Motorists rush to petrol stations and pump them dry, just as they did during the fuel protests of 2000 and the tanker drivers’ strike in 2021.
In the Red Sea, an oil supertanker heading for the Suez Canal and a cargo container ship are set ablaze as Houthi rebels in Yemen open fire with missiles supplied by Iran.
Day 4
Starmer makes a second emergency statement, this time in Parliament. Reform UK and the Conservatives demand he must emulate Donald Trump and ban the export of Britain’s own much-diminished oil and gas production, to try to keep prices affordable for UK consumers. While Britain has not been self-sufficient for the past two decades, it does still produce 56 per cent of its own energy.
But Starmer insists that such export controls would be ‘against international law’. Instead, he announces emergency legislation to impose rationing on British motorists. Just like the 1970s oil crisis, a 50mph national speed limit is imposed for petrol and diesel cars to save fuel.
Day 5
Details of the proposed petrol-rationing scheme are leaked and cause mass anger as it is revealed that public sector key workers working for Labour-supporting trade unions will be issued with greater allowances than everyone else.
Drivers queue to fill up their cars in Berkshire during the pandemic when fuel availability was worryingly low - something Britons could see again if the war continues
Day 6
By now, it is becoming clear that the crisis does not stop with oil: 20 per cent of the world’s liquefied natural gas (LNG) has been lost as Qatar is no longer able to export it. While Britain sources only 2 per cent of its gas from Qatar, Trump announces that US LNG exports will be limited, too. That puts at risk another 17 per cent of UK gas supply – payback, the President says, for Britain’s failure to send the Royal Navy to the Gulf when he called for our help.
Day 7
With just a few hours of gas supply left in Britain’s storage facilities, the Government announces that gas will have to be rationed, too. As during Covid, emergency legislation is hurried through Parliament.
It becomes a criminal offence, punishable with a £10,000 fine, to set your central heating thermostat to more than 17 Celsius – though with an exception for the over-65s or those with chronic conditions.
The Government wants to avoid the ridicule Labour inspired 50 years ago when the ‘drought minister’ suggested sharing a hot bath with a friend; instead it becomes an offence to have a bath deeper than 6 inches – although no minister can say how this will be enforced.
Week 2
Holiday flights are grounded as airlines are unable to import enough aviation fuel to keep flying. Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander orders airports to give preference to flights predominantly used by business travellers – to Amsterdam, New York or Tokyo, for example – over those booked by tourists. Travel to holiday spots including the Balearics, Thailand, the Canary Islands and Greece is slashed by half.
Panic buying strips supermarkets of supplies. Fruit and meat from all over the world cease to be imported, bread sells out within minutes each morning. With aisles crammed by anxious shoppers, grabbing anything they can, shoplifting becomes rife. Black market stalls spring up in lay-bys, car parks and derelict high street shops, selling every kind of ordinary household goods – all of it stolen.
Unwilling to provoke riots by seizing the wares, police are reduced to keeping order as crowds gather to purchase what they need from the back of lorries.
Panic buying strips supermarkets of supplies. Fruit and meat from all over the world cease to be imported, bread sells out within minutes each morning
The National Energy System Operator warns that Britain is heading for a blackout in two days’ time, due to a forecast spell of calm and cloudy weather. Without enough gas to back up the becalmed wind turbines, the quango pleads for consumers to reduce demand by wearing the same clothes for days at a time and not using their washing machines.
Week 3
After Ofgem announces the Electricity Price Cap will have to double, Chancellor Rachel Reeves announces billions in subsidies. Bond markets react with horror, just as they did in 2022 when Liz Truss promised tens of billions of pounds of unfunded tax cuts. Yields on government bonds soar, pushing up the cost of public debt. Within days, the Electricity Price Guarantee is dropped.
Given that the amount of electricity generated by wind and solar farms is so variable, homes are subject to blackouts at short notice, depending on the weather.
The 50mph limit is reduced to 30mph while car journeys for leisure are banned. Motorists who cannot show that they are going to work, seeking medical treatment or collecting provisions are liable to be fined up to £20,000.
Week 4
As blackouts worsen, a consortium of business people led by the billionaire Jim Ratcliffe, boss of petrochemical giant INEOS, presents the Government with an emergency plan. They want the ban on new oil and gas extraction licences to be lifted with immediate effect, and for some old coal mines to be reopened. Energy Secretary Ed Miliband rejects it all out of hand, saying: ‘The chaos in the global markets proves that our push to Net Zero is such a model to the world.’
In an effort to conserve its own supplies, France blocks exports of electricity from its nuclear power grid to neighbouring countries. Britain is told it must agree to pay billions and submit to vast tracts of new EU regulations without a say in them in order to receive electricity across the Channel. Starmer meekly agrees.
Month 2
Although agricultural machinery and food distribution lorries are supposed to be exempt from restrictions on travel, farmers are reporting that a huge spate of diesel thefts is preventing them from harvesting crops. They warn it is also increasingly difficult to obtain fertiliser at an affordable price because fossil fuel is crucial in its production. Imported foods are becoming especially hard to come by thanks to a slowdown in shipping – ships are travelling at half their normal speed in order to save fuel.
Violence sparked by food shortages, dubbed ‘bread riots’, is becoming common, with several food lorries hijacked and overturned by mobs. Protests, fuelled by conspiracy theories on social media, frequently escalate into fighting, with injuries and even deaths a tragic consequence. Angela Rayner calls for all food distribution to be rationed and handled by the Army, with free supplies for everyone on welfare.
Steel and cement production ceases for the first time in Britain since the 18th century, owing to sky-high energy prices. The Government considers nationalising the plants but realises it cannot restart production, because the remaining trickle of fuel supplies is desperately needed for hospitals and homes of vulnerable people. A Land Rover rolls off the production lines before the works are shuttered – there are calls for it to be given to the Science Museum as it is likely to be the last car ever to be built in Britain.
Jeers resound in Parliament as Miliband chooses the moment to announce that UK carbon emissions have fallen to 20 per cent of 1990 levels. ‘Thanks to the firm actions of this government we are now back on track to reach net zero by 2050 if not earlier,’ he tells the Commons. This ‘green effect’ is entirely down to people being unable to afford to heat their water, use their cookers or even keep the lights on.
Months 3 and 4
The Government fractures, with the hard-Left led by Angela Rayner breaking away from Starmer’s more soft-Left of the party. A snap general election is the inevitable result. At first it looks as if it will be won by Reform UK, which is promising to reopen coal mines and start fracking for gas. But an anti-Farage coalition quickly builds.
The Greens fight the election promising to ‘bring to justice’ the billionaires they claim are hoarding fuel in order to drive up prices.
The Greens never quite manage to explain who these billionaires are nor where the fuel is that they are supposedly hoarding, but their campaign wins the public imagination, especially among young people and they win the election with a majority of 100 seats. Reform UK becomes the official opposition while Labour and the Tories are reduced to just a handful of seats.
The next day, the British economy goes into freefall.
Ross Clark is the author of The Denial, a satirical novel on climate change
