Will Britain run short of fuel? Oil, refined products and gas

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🛢 How the fuel scorecard works ✕

"Shortage" means three different things, and the tile keeps them apart

A price shortage — fuel available, but at prices that force people to use less — is happening now, worldwide: diesel refining margins are running at eight to ten times their normal level. An allocation shortage — governments rationing by rule — is happening in some countries, not Britain. A physical shortage — homes or firms involuntarily cut off — has not happened anywhere, and for the UK the credible risk window is a cold snap between December 2026 and February 2027, on the gas side. Most arguments about "will there be a shortage" are two people talking about different rungs of this ladder.

Computed, not assigned

Each fuel is scored on three published indicators (import dependency, stock cover, and concentration of supply routes), plus one for who actually controls the emergency stock. Every indicator has fixed green/amber/red thresholds, set out once and drawn to scale as the coloured track behind each figure — the dark tick is where the UK sits. Green scores 0 points, amber 1, red 2; the fuel chips add them up, so lower is better. The thresholds are our editorial choice (published, fixed, dated); the values are not — each carries its source and its date.

Old figures say so

Most of these numbers have no live feed — they come from annual statistical digests and one-off official statements, and they age. Each figure shows its date; ones older than the indicator's shelf life are marked stale rather than being quietly passed off as current. The one live figure is gas storage, from GIE's AGSI+ transparency platform (the same feed the industry uses); the "days of winter demand" conversion is our own arithmetic and is labelled as ours wherever it appears.

Why Britain scores "Stressed" while the lights stay on

The UK's crude position is genuinely comfortable — half home-supplied, no chokepoint exposure. The stress is in what refines it and what stores it: diesel self-sufficiency around 45%, storage capacity for roughly 12 days against Germany's 89 and France's 103 — and far less than that actually in store, because Rough holds nothing — and no government-owned emergency stock at all — the obligation sits entirely on private company balance sheets. None of that means shortage tomorrow; it means less buffer than most neighbours if something else goes wrong.

Scored by StreetOwl's own rules engine from DESNZ DUKES 2026, IEA, Eurostat, GIE AGSI+, S&P Global and national sources — every figure dated and attributed on the tile. The same engine scores eight world regions on the World tab's Energy layer.

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