00:01The UK diesel price has moved into record territory and the RAC says the question is now how far above
00:08£2 a litre it could climb.
00:10For Bristol and the West Country, the exposure runs through both freight and the rural economy.
00:16Around Avonmouth and Sevenside, major distribution businesses move goods into the M4 and M5 corridors.
00:23Further West, farms, food producers, construction firms and rural services rely on diesel powered vehicles and machinery.
00:33Higher fuel bills raise the cost of doing that work.
00:36Now businesses may absorb some of the increase but sustained rises can feed into haulage rates, contracts and delivery charges.
00:45Those costs ultimately reach consumers.
00:47So record diesel is not simply a problem at the pump here, it can push up the price of everyday
00:53goods and services across our region over time.
00:58There can be no doubt that the fact that the fuel prices are going up is primarily due to the
01:03situation caused by Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu in Iran.
01:08Quite clearly once you sort of have a conflict such as that and the fact that the Straits of Hormuz,
01:14where a lot of they all move through, it's bound to sort of create a supply side problem.
01:18Now there is no end in sight so we expect them to go up.
01:22We've also got the added complication that sort of diesel has gone up sort of fairly sort of dramatically in
01:26recent times.
01:27Caused by the sort of the fact that sort of refining sort of processes which of course diesel being another
01:32sub product of oil have been sort of closed down as a result of the conflict.
01:36And also allows that the fact that sort of Donald Trump has decreed that there should be sort of a
01:40ban to exports from America or the United States to the rest of the world.
01:45So of course this is making the sort of the black stuff or the derivatives of such to be sort
01:50of quite a sort of precious commodity.
01:52Do I sort of see any end to this?
01:54Well, Trump has promised the end of the conflict on an occasion so we can't put much faith in that.
01:59We've got the midterms going up.
02:00Maybe of course that might sort of give him cause to sort of to think if the consequences of that
02:05are sort of he's voted out of the two houses where the election has been held.
02:09Do I see any sort of upside?
02:10I think it's important to recognize of course as fuel prices go up we use less of it.
02:14So people sort of become sort of more careful in their use.
02:16But also of course in the short to medium term though but I think in the longer term it will
02:21sort of underpin the sort of the transition to sort of to net zero.
02:25But of course quite clearly the last thing that the government probably would want is ever to go out and
02:28buy electric cars because of course we don't have the sort of capacity.
02:31And besides of course electricity prices are also going up so that's part of the problem.
02:35So all in all it demonstrates the sort of the problem that when we're dependent upon sort of something that
02:40comes from oil we have to pay the sort of the price when it becomes in short supply.
02:43Well there is no firm forecast for where diesel prices will peak but while global supply remains tight households and
02:54businesses could keep paying more through fuel goods and services.
02:59So for you to seeполож things came out quickly.
02:59So for you to see there is no attempt to shift like there is no style there it is¡ these
03:00pins to squeeze above everything regardless
