Submitted by Bill Fernie
22nd August 2026
The oil price has become one of those numbers that seems to move relentlessly in one direction.
Brent crude is now around $94 a barrel, having risen by more than 7% over the past five days. The latest rise comes as tensions surrounding Iran and the Strait of Hormuz continue, with hopes of a diplomatic breakthrough fading.
The obvious question for consumers is a rather depressing one.
Is there anything we can actually do about it?
The answer is yes but probably not as much as we would like.
An individual household cannot influence the price of Brent crude. It cannot reopen the Strait of Hormuz, persuade Iran to return to negotiations or determine whether Washington imposes another round of sanctions.
But households can influence how much an oil-price shock hurts them.
And collectively, those individual decisions can eventually influence the amount of oil the economy consumes.
That distinction is becoming increasingly important as the possibility of Brent reaching $100 moves closer.
The first thing consumers can control is consumption
Petrol and diesel are the most obvious examples.
When fuel becomes more expensive, people can combine journeys, avoid unnecessary trips, drive more economically, share journeys or use public transport where it is practical.
For somebody living in a city, those choices may be relatively straightforward.
For somebody living in rural Scotland, they can be much harder.
A person in Caithness may have to drive considerable distances simply to work, shop, attend appointments or access services. There may be no realistic alternative.
That is one reason an oil-price shock is not experienced equally across Britain.
The national average can disguise the fact that rural households can have much less ability to reduce their fuel consumption.
Heating oil is an even bigger problem
For households off the gas network, there is a particularly difficult problem.
You cannot simply decide that you will not use heating oil.
The house still has to be heated.
The Scottish Government has already noted that heating-oil prices, after moderating earlier in the year, had begun to pick up again in July.
And the international market has been moving sharply. Heating oil was also rising on Friday, with the benchmark price around 9% higher than a month earlier.
This is where reducing consumption becomes more realistic than eliminating it.
Better insulation, lower thermostat settings, heating occupied rooms rather than the entire house and making sure boilers and heating systems are operating efficiently can all reduce the amount of fuel required.
It isn't glamorous.
But every litre that doesn't have to be bought is a litre that isn't affected by the oil price.
There is another option — timing
Heating oil also demonstrates something consumers sometimes overlook.
You don't necessarily have to buy when the market is at its most expensive.
Obviously nobody can predict the oil price reliably.
But households with enough fuel in their tanks to avoid an emergency purchase have more flexibility than those who wait until the tank is nearly empty.
Watching prices and buying when there is a temporary fall can make a difference over the course of a year.
That is particularly relevant in rural areas, where delivery costs and local competition can also influence the final price paid.
It is not a way of defeating the oil market.
It is simply a way of reducing your exposure to its worst moments.
Food is where the oil shock becomes harder to see
Consumers tend to think about oil when they see the petrol price rise.
But the effect on food is much more complicated.
The farmer uses fuel.
The manufacturer uses energy.
The lorry transporting the product uses diesel.
The supermarket distribution centre consumes energy.
The delivery vehicle takes the food to the shop.
There can be several layers of transport and energy costs before a product reaches the consumer.
That doesn't mean a 10% increase in crude oil automatically produces a 10% increase in food prices.
Far from it.
Businesses absorb some costs, renegotiate contracts and look for efficiencies.
But eventually persistent higher energy costs have to be paid by somebody.
And some of that cost will find its way to consumers.
This is where consumers have a surprisingly powerful weapon
What they choose not to buy.
If a product becomes too expensive, consumers can switch to another brand, buy a cheaper alternative, postpone a purchase or simply do without.
Businesses notice.
A supermarket cannot indefinitely raise prices if customers respond by moving to cheaper products.
A restaurant cannot simply pass every increase in its delivery and energy costs to customers if diners stop coming.
A manufacturer cannot raise prices without considering whether competitors will take its market share.
This is one of the mechanisms economists describe as demand destruction.
It sounds rather technical, but the principle is simple.
When something becomes expensive enough, people use less of it.
And when enough people use less of it, demand falls.
That eventually puts downward pressure on prices.
The oil market contains its own potential cure
This is the strange thing about oil.
A very high price can eventually create the conditions for a lower price.
At $100 a barrel, people start changing behaviour.
They buy more efficient cars.
They drive less.
Companies invest in efficiency.
Airlines become more careful about fuel consumption.
Businesses look for alternatives.
Electric vehicles become more attractive.
Renewable energy becomes more competitive.
Heating systems become more efficient.
All of that reduces demand for oil.
The problem is that this takes time.
It doesn't help much when a household receives an unexpectedly high fuel bill next month.
And consumers cannot substitute everything
There is an important limit to the argument that people can simply change their behaviour.
You cannot easily replace a fishing boat's diesel engine overnight.
A farmer cannot stop using fuel in a tractor simply because diesel has become expensive.
A haulier cannot deliver goods without moving the lorry.
A rural household cannot necessarily eliminate car use.
And somebody still has to transport food and other essential goods to remote communities.
This is why oil-price shocks can be particularly painful outside major cities.
The less opportunity people have to substitute away from oil, the greater the proportion of their income that can be swallowed by higher energy and transport costs.
Scotland has another vulnerability
Scotland produces energy, yet many Scottish households remain exposed to international energy prices.
That can seem like a contradiction.
Scotland has oil and gas, enormous wind resources and a rapidly expanding renewable-energy sector.
But producing energy does not automatically mean that Scottish consumers receive that energy at a permanently discounted price.
Oil is traded in an international market.
If Brent rises, the effect eventually reaches consumers regardless of where they live.
And for rural Scotland, transport costs add another layer to the problem.
The danger is what happens beyond the petrol pump
The real economic damage from $100 oil would not necessarily come from petrol suddenly becoming unaffordable.
It would come from the accumulation of hundreds of smaller increases.
Higher diesel costs.
Higher haulage charges.
Higher heating-oil bills.
Higher fishing costs.
Higher agricultural costs.
Higher distribution costs.
Higher aviation costs.
And eventually higher prices for some of the goods and services those industries provide.
Britain has already experienced a painful inflation shock.
The latest Scottish economic bulletin shows that inflation had fallen considerably from its peak, although energy costs remain a source of concern.
A sustained oil-price surge risks putting some of that progress into reverse.
That is particularly worrying because households have already adjusted their spending to cope with several years of higher prices.
There may simply not be much more room to cut.
So can consumers fight back?
Yes — but the phrase “fight back” needs some qualification.
Consumers can reduce their oil consumption.
They can shop around.
They can avoid unnecessary journeys.
They can improve insulation.
They can make their homes more energy efficient.
They can change purchasing habits.
They can switch to cheaper alternatives.
They can delay discretionary spending when necessary.
But none of those things controls the international oil market.
And that is why the distinction between reducing your exposure and solving the problem matters.
The first is possible.
The second is not.
Perhaps the biggest lesson is to prepare before the price arrives
If Brent does reach $100, the worst response for a household would be to start thinking about energy efficiency only after the bills have risen.
The best protection is built beforehand.
Every unit of electricity or litre of fuel that a household can eliminate permanently reduces its exposure to future price shocks.
That is one reason developments such as plug-in solar, better insulation, heat pumps, electric vehicles and more efficient appliances matter even when they do not immediately pay for themselves.
They are not simply about saving money today.
They are about reducing dependence on things whose prices you cannot control.
Consumers have power — but only collectively
Perhaps the most important point is that individual action becomes much more powerful when millions of households and businesses do the same thing.
One person driving less will not change the oil price.
Ten million people driving less might.
One household improving its insulation won't change the energy market.
Millions doing so eventually will.
That is how markets respond.
The irony is that consumers cannot defeat an oil shock by themselves, but their response to an oil shock can eventually help to weaken the demand that created the market's vulnerability in the first place.
For now, however, the immediate problem remains.
Brent is approaching $100, and the latest Reuters figures show it around $94, with the market facing another week of geopolitical uncertainty.
The question for consumers is therefore not whether they can stop Brent reaching $100.
They can't.
The more useful question is:
How much less vulnerable can we make ourselves before it gets there?
And for households and businesses across rural Scotland, that could prove to be a much more important question than the oil price itself.
There is another side to this story which is easily missed when we talk about consumers being powerless against international oil prices.
An individual cannot influence the price of Brent crude. But an individual can decide how much of that oil-price increase is allowed to reach their own household budget.
I have been trying to do exactly that.
Rather than continuing to buy heating oil as the price has risen, I have stopped buying it altogether. That doesn't mean the house no longer needs heating. Instead, I have concentrated on heating one room when necessary and using electricity rather than burning heating oil.
I have also become increasingly ruthless about electricity consumption. Lights and appliances that don't need to be on are switched off, and I have been looking much more carefully at what the house is actually consuming.
The result is quite striking.
Even while I am currently staying with my daughters for a week, I am still monitoring the electricity use at home. At present the house is costing only around £1.35 a day for electricity, including the standing charge.
That is not something I would suggest is easily achievable for every household. Houses, heating systems and family circumstances are all different. Someone with children at home, an elderly person needing to keep several rooms warm, or someone living in a poorly insulated property may have very little scope to reduce consumption.
That is why I think it is important to distinguish between being able to fight back and being able to eliminate the problem.
I have been fortunate enough to have some choices about how I use energy, and I have chosen to reduce my exposure to heating-oil prices rather than simply accept whatever the market charges.
I have taken a similar approach to food.
While prices are relatively stable, I have been building up food stocks gradually. The idea isn't to panic-buy or strip supermarket shelves. It is simply to buy some products when prices are reasonable rather than finding myself forced to buy everything at whatever price happens to be charged during a future spike.
In a sense, it is the household equivalent of what businesses do when they try to control their exposure to volatile costs.
You cannot control the market.
But you can sometimes control when you buy, how much you use and how dependent you are on the most volatile prices.
That, perhaps, is the most realistic form of consumer resistance.
It won't bring Brent crude down from $94 to $80.
It won't make heating oil cheaper.
It won't stop food prices rising if transport and production costs increase.
But if enough households become more efficient and less dependent on expensive energy, the effect on their own finances can be substantial.
And that is perhaps the lesson worth taking from the present oil shock.
Consumers aren't powerless. They simply have a much smaller weapon than the people trading oil in London, New York and Singapore.
Our weapon is consumption.
We can decide how much energy we use, how much fuel we burn, what we buy and when we buy it.
For some people the room for manoeuvre will be considerable.
For others it will be tiny.
But even a small reduction in dependence can make the next price shock a little less painful.
Bill Fernie