Lebanon Fuel Crisis

[Dirty Hipsters]

Didn't see a thread on this, so I figured I'd make one.

With the Haiti earthquake and the situation with Afghanistan taking up most of the headlines, here's another terrible world event going on right now.

Lebanon is experiencing a massive fuel shortage. This is creating massive blackouts. Some areas are only getting a couple of hours of electricity a day, and some aren't getting any. Hospitals are having trouble operating due to the lack of electricity and having to ration fuel for generators. People aren't able to gas up their cars, and have to buy gas on the black market if they can get it.

There's been months of fuel shortages before, but it's gotten worse within the last week after the Central Bank announced that it would stop spending roughly $3 billion annually on fuel subsidies which has encouraged distributors to hoard their fuel reserves and see if they can sell at higher rates later.

Some saying this is the worst thing to happen to Lebanon since the civil war.

Fuel shortages leave Lebanese hospitals in ‘critical condition’

With fuel and medicine shortages, Lebanese hospitals struggle to treat those wounded in the Akkar fuel explosion.

www.aljazeera.com

Lebanese parliament to discuss fuel crisis on Friday

The Lebanese parliament will convene on Friday to discuss what to do about a fuel crisis that has brought much of the country to a halt and sparked deadly violence.

www.reuters.com

 

[Trunkage]

I think Lebanon is also having hyperinflation problems. Like 200% in the last month.

 

[Dirty Hipsters]

I think Lebanon is also having hyperinflation problems. Like 200% in the last month.

Yeah, that's part of the reason for the fuel crisis, the devaluation of their money by something like 90% within the last 2 years.

 

[Dreiko]

I saw a random vid where this guy who went there had to go to black market vendors to get Lebanese money because of inflation and that it fluctuates by the HOUR which is insane. If he were to buy a big mac it'd cost him like 17 dollars but in Lebanese money it was like maybe half a dollar so it's really crazy. It's prolly shifted a lot since then too. Stuff in stores did not actually have price tags because prices shifted so rapidly so the person at the counter needed to tell folks how much things costed by doing a real time scan on each thing from some sort of database.

 

[Adam Jensen]

Lebanon is experiencing a massive fuel shortage. This is creating massive blackouts. Some areas are only getting a couple of hours of electricity a day, and some aren't getting any. Hospitals are having trouble operating due to the lack of electricity and having to ration fuel for generators. People aren't able to gas up their cars, and have to buy gas on the black market if they can get it.

It's an incredible thing to behold because we can observe how events are going to unfold in pretty much every country that doesn't switch to renewable energy as soon as possible. It will be even worse once it's a global issue.

 

[Agema]

I saw a random vid where this guy who went there had to go to black market vendors to get Lebanese money because of inflation and that it fluctuates by the HOUR which is insane.

Mm...

Lebanon's inflation is estimated at 100-300% - that's annual. So less than 1% a day. There is not going to be meaningful hourly fluctuation by that measure. However, scarcity (which inflation could well cause) might cause sharp and frequent price increases for specific items whilst they are scarce, although these will not reflect the average inflation of all goods and services.

 

[meiam]

Lebanon is rapidly going toward being a failed state, it was long consider a model for inter race/faith relationship with its population roughly mixed 1:1:1 between christina:shia:sunni without any major backlash in the last few decades. Problem is the price for this was forced representation in government, this turned toward people just promising job quota for their ethnic group which directly translated to incompetence and corruption.

Now the government is completely inept (not inept in the western sense of can't reduce 1st world massive house, but inept in the sense that it can't guarantee basic good) and there's no mechanism to fix this, most major power have thrown their hand, Saudi isn't writing checks anymore and even the IMF is starting to get pissed off. And despite this the government continue to squabble about ethnic quota. The Beirut explosion investigation is going nowhere since every time they try to interrogate people political interference stop them (in fun fact it was discovered that most of the nitrate was gone by the time the explosion occurred, probably sold by official). The only real industry was financial, but that's pretty much gone at this point.

Fuel shortage is just one aspect, something like 20% of the electricity came from this massive barge/power plant (from Turkey iirc), the thing is they didn't get paid in something like over a year and were threatening to leave anyway.

I don't see how it would be possible for Lebanon to get out of this quagmire without a full reset, fire literally everyone and start over from scratch.

 

[Gordon_4]

Aren't they also still cleaning up the fallout of that massive dock explosion like two years ago? Or did that happen somewhere else?

 

[Dirty Hipsters]

Aren't they also still cleaning up the fallout of that massive dock explosion like two years ago? Or did that happen somewhere else?

Yes, and that was last year.

 

[Gordon_4]

Yes, and that was last year.

I'm kind glad I only flubbed the timeline and not the place. Time has felt weird as hell this past couple of years.

 

[Gergar12]

Lebanon is a mismanaged country. Ever since the civil war, most of the wealthy have left the country. (Mostly the Christians) They have had multiple governments who have all been forced to resign. Yet they have nowhere to go since their country isn't screwed enough yet to warren them being refugees to Europe.

 

[Agema]

Lebanon is a mismanaged country. Ever since the civil war, most of the wealthy have left the country. (Mostly the Christians) They have had multiple governments who have all been forced to resign. Yet they have nowhere to go since their country isn't screwed enough yet to warren them being refugees to Europe.

Lebanon is still a pretty wealthy country by regional standards, in ways well developed and a good standard of education. But you are absolutely right that it is totally mismanaged, and the ongoing chaos drives a lot of its more capable population to emigrate.

 

[Specter Von Baren]

I'm kind glad I only flubbed the timeline and not the place. Time has felt weird as hell this past couple of years.

To be fair, 2020 is this kind of actual blackhole where time is both slower and faster than normal. It feels as if that year was the longest of many peoples lives yet also feels as if it didn't happen at all, as if we're still living in 2020.