Andrew Sissons

I think that’s probably right - and hope so! But adding oil to the mix would make the economic impact still serious

Would much rather be Spain or France than UK or Italy, but everyone will feel an impact

I agree, but I don’t think anyone will be fully insulated from the crisis. The European energy market is quite connected will rise everywhere (expect interconnectors to get politicised further).

Plus we still use loads most of our oil and gas for transport and heat

Chart showing European gas, Brent crude oil and stock prices since the start of 2026. Gas prices are up 80% (mostly since the Iran invasion), oil prices up 40%, and stocks have barely changed

One way in which a 2026 energy crisis* might be different to 2022: it would likely affect oil as well as gas.

In 2022, the main issue was gas, which mainly affected electricity and heating bills.
If oil spikes as well, expect transport and more industrial production to face problems

Good news re: gas, but petrol and electricity could still be a big issue over summer

As @adambell.bsky.social floated earlier this week, things could get a lot more serious if Trump were to block US gas exports.
Given the politics of rising oil and gas prices, that seems… worryingly plausible right now

Investors are not ready for a true shock [FREE TO READ] The consensus view of the impact of the Iran war on equities and bonds may well prove too sanguine

Investors are not ready for a true shock -
(Yet)

Me, 300 free clicks: as.ft.com/r/4cc9ab3a-6...

Yes, NI is very different to GB on heating, not much of a gas grid.
I suspect gas prices will still end up rising more than heating oil, but it will be painful for everyone if we have a crisis

Good point that those using oil for heating will be affected straight away.

Oil heating is not that common (around 4% of British homes use it; most off grid homes use electric heating), but it is used in rural areas and there is no price cap for it.

It should make it much more attractive - although electricity would get much more expensive, and not everyone can transition at once!

Sankey chart of energy use in the UK in 2024

I expect I will be spending more time with this chart this year…
You can see that a large chunk of our oil is imported (though we export plenty too), and that most of it is used in vehicles (incredibly inefficient vehicles btw)

Investors are not ready for a true shock The consensus view of the impact of the Iran war on equities and bonds may well prove too sanguine

Chart is from @katie0martin.ft.com’s excellent column. Always always read Katie if you can, especially at times like this…

giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/...

*Still too early to say whether there will be energy crisis, but we should be preparing for one

Chart showing European gas, Brent crude oil and stock prices since the start of 2026. Gas prices are up 80% (mostly since the Iran invasion), oil prices up 40%, and stocks have barely changed

One way in which a 2026 energy crisis* might be different to 2022: it would likely affect oil as well as gas.

In 2022, the main issue was gas, which mainly affected electricity and heating bills.
If oil spikes as well, expect transport and more industrial production to face problems

This reminded me of a fascinating section in @josephinequinn.bsky.social’s
How the World Made the West.
There were two routes from the eastern Med into Asia.
One was down the Red Sea by ship.
The other was to caravan across the desert to Palmyra, and float down the Euphrates to the Persian Gulf.

It seemed like a small-ish car - so can only imagine it was speeding. But it’s such a narrow road you’d never think of putting speed restrictions on it

One another day, Arthur and I could easily have been walking along the bit of pavement where it landed. As could any number of people

Yesterday evening a car overturned on my road - a very narrow residential road that you can only just about squeeze an SUV down.

As far as I can tell, no one was seriously hurt, thankfully. But I’m honestly at a loss to understand how this could happen

But getting paid for those more “public good” activities is hard, and requires government to step in.
The risk is that you leave farmers caught between clinging to a difficult activity (sheep) without support, and unsure about whether the new environmental subsidy regime is enough to make a living

The truth is that declining sheep numbers would probably be a good thing, as long as we can help sheep farmers make a better living by diversifying.

It’s a pretty low value and precarious activity, and some of the land could be better used for recreation, nature and managing the flow of water

Chart showing total UK sheep numbers since 1985. There was a big drop after foot-and-mouth in 2001, and a very slight decline more recently

And over the last 50 years there has been a significant fall in lamb and mutton consumption across Britain according to Becky Smith, a senior analyst at the Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board (AHDB), which represents farmers. In 1980 the average UK household purchased 128g of sheep meat (lamb and mutton) per person, per week. In 2024 that same measure was down to 23g per person, per week.

Though I’m not sure the headline really fits the data to be honest - the total number of sheep has changed very little since foot-and-mouth, and I’m not sure this is consistent yet with “disappearing”

(Though the stats on falling lamb/mutton consumption are much more striking)

Sheep are disappearing from the UK's hills - and its dinner plates Have we have passed

This is an interesting feature on sheep farming in the UK, asking whether sheep farming has a future here…

www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

NEW ANALYSIS: UK emissions fell 2.4% in 2025 as coal fell to a 400-year low. Incredibly, we used less coal last year than than in 1600, when Queen Elizabeth I was on the throne and Shakespeare was writing Hamlet.

All the details in our article: www.carbonbrief.org/...

That’s an interesting idea! Quite hard to do, but would be conceptually cool to visualise the breakdown of sources of growth

This is a very nice chart concept, casting new light on a familiar issue.
But also, I am shocked to learn that people born in 2007 are now allowed to vote

Good points - hope they’re used wisely!

There are two things that didn’t change after 2022, despite a lot of people conveniently forgetting them:
1. The price of gas has remained significantly higher
2. Our gas supplies have been at risk from a volatile geopolitical landscape.

We should always have been electrifying as fast as we could…

In August 2022, I did a viral post about what the Prime Minister should say in response to a record high energy price cap.
That was 6 months after the invasion of Ukraine. Even in very severe crises, it can take time for price rises to land on consumer bills. But once they do, they can stick around…

I’m pulling together my thoughts this morning on what the Iran war might mean for energy bills - hope to publish something early next week.

But one thing I’d say is: we should be cautious about rushing to judgement too quickly. We could have another 2022-style crisis in store, but we don’t know yet

Is gas still the reason energy bills are so high? Despite rising non-commodity costs on energy bills, high gas prices remain the primary reason for expensive energy for most British households, making the switch to homegrown energy a top priority

Kemi Badenoch on #r4today saying the gov should prioritise energy security in the current Middle East crisis - Nick Robinson should have asked what her plan is for getting the UK off foreign gas and onto renewables! Gas is the issue as @acjsissons.bsky.social details www.nesta.org.uk/blog/is-gas-...