Ben Lowry: The first glimmer of hope since February that home heating oil prices in Northern Ireland might fall
A deal seemed to have been secured for the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz, which Iran shut in February but it was apparently closed again today (Saturday).
(To read Ben Lowry’s main column on Keir Starmer being almost destroyed by office, click here)
We all hope that it is fully reopened.
In March I wrote that we were lucky in the northern hemisphere that the closure, and subsequent rocketing of old prices, was happening just as we emerged from winter. With a mild spring, people would not need their oil much until autumn. The best approach, I suggested, was to put on a pullover and use as little oil as possible in the hope prices would fall. I was not being flippant – it is what I did. I was not saying it was less than a crisis – I said the closure of the strait was unprecedented, worse for oil supply even than the 2022 Ukraine invasion.
The disastrous spike in oil prices this time has indeed been even worse than four years ago. The Northern Ireland Consumer Council, which monitors average home heating oil prices, says we have just had our seventh week in which the average price of such fuel has been more than £1 a litre. In the week to Thursday, the average cost of 900 litres of oil was £1,017, more than £1.10. After Putin launched war, it was only that high for two weeks, then stayed mostly high – 85p a litre – for most of the following year. Incredibly, this is worse, so it was good to see retailers selling 900 ltrs yesterday at almost down to £1 a litre for the first time since February.
• Ben Lowry (@Benlowry2) is News Letter editor