27th August 2026
There is a question about fuel security that most of us probably never think about until the petrol station is empty.
How many filling stations could Highland lose before everyday life began to break down?
It is a particularly relevant question after what has happened in Ukraine this summer.
Russia has targeted more than 200 petrol stations in Ukraine during the recent escalation, with attacks concentrated particularly in areas such as Kharkiv, Sumy, Donetsk, Dnipropetrovsk, Zaporizhzhia and Poltava. The attacks have not just damaged buildings. They have disrupted the movement of people, goods and services.
That is not to suggest that anyone expects Highland filling stations to be attacked. There is no reason to make such a claim.
The lesson from Ukraine is much broader.
Modern communities can discover very quickly that a filling station is not simply somewhere motorists go to buy petrol. It is part of the infrastructure that keeps almost everything else moving.
And Highland is particularly vulnerable because of its geography.
Highland doesn't have that many filling stations
The most reliable Highland-wide figure I can find is 85 petrol filling stations, from Competition and Markets Authority analysis based on Experian data. That information is from 2023, so the current number may have changed, but it provides a useful benchmark.
Think about that for a moment.
Highland covers more than 25,000 square kilometres.
Those 85 filling stations are spread across an enormous area.
In a city, losing a petrol station might be an inconvenience. There may be another one half a mile away.
In Highland, losing one can be a completely different proposition.
For someone in a remote community, the next filling station could be many miles away.
And that affects far more than the private motorist.
An ambulance needs fuel.
A district nurse needs fuel.
A care worker visiting elderly residents needs fuel.
A farmer needs fuel.
A fishing business needs fuel.
A delivery van needs fuel.
A tradesperson travelling between communities needs fuel.
The supermarket lorry bringing food to a remote town needs fuel.
Even the person going to work needs fuel.
The filling station is therefore part of the economic infrastructure of the community.
What would losing 10 stations mean?
We can illustrate the vulnerability by using the 85-station figure.
If Highland lost 10 stations, that would be almost 12% of the network.
Twenty stations would be nearly 24%.
Thirty would be about 35%.
Forty-two would represent approximately half the network.
We don't have to imagine all 85 disappearing.
The interesting question is what happens when the losses become large enough to create pressure on the stations that remain.
If 10 stations closed, motorists would simply travel further.
If 20 closed, the remaining stations would become considerably busier.
If 30 closed, some communities could find themselves seriously isolated.
At 40 or more, we could be talking about a regional fuel-distribution problem rather than individual station closures.
And there is another complication.
The stations most important to Highland's resilience may not be the busiest ones.
A filling station in Inverness may serve thousands of vehicles.
A remote filling station may serve fewer customers but be absolutely essential to its community.
From a commercial perspective, it may be marginal.
From a resilience perspective, it could be priceless.
Highland Council's own Trading Standards reporting provides an interesting illustration. It describes a "vital remote petrol filling station" where equipment had reached the end of its life and petrol was temporarily unavailable, eventually resulting in the installation of Scotland's first retail above-ground petroleum tank so that the station could return to business.
That tells us something important.
Some filling stations are infrastructure in all but name.
Ukraine shows what happens when fuel becomes difficult to obtain
The situation in Ukraine has become a particularly striking demonstration of this.
The Financial Times reported that Russian attacks had destroyed more than 200 petrol stations during the summer, with the disruption affecting logistics and the delivery of goods.
And the consequences aren't confined to the people who need to fill their cars.
If a delivery vehicle cannot refuel, goods don't arrive.
If tradespeople cannot travel, work doesn't get done.
If workers cannot reach their workplaces, businesses suffer.
If agricultural machinery cannot obtain fuel, food production is affected.
The effects spread through the economy.
Russia itself has now experienced a different version of the same vulnerability. Ukrainian attacks on Russian oil infrastructure, combined with high seasonal demand and other problems, have contributed to petrol shortages. Reuters reported in August that motorists in Moscow were encountering long queues and fuel purchase restrictions, while some stations had closed or were offering only certain fuels.
The important lesson is that you don't necessarily have to destroy a filling station to create a fuel crisis.
You can disrupt the supply chain feeding it.
Highland has another problem: distance
This is where geography becomes critical.
Suppose ten filling stations disappear from a densely populated part of Britain.
People may complain, but alternatives will probably be available.
Highland is different.
A driver who finds their local station closed may have to make a 20, 30 or even longer additional journey simply to obtain fuel.
That creates a peculiar vicious circle.
You need petrol to travel to the petrol station.
If the station is 30 miles away, you have already used fuel before you can buy more.
And for businesses running vans and vehicles, the additional mileage itself becomes a cost.
A farmer isn't just making an inconvenient journey.
A care worker may be spending part of the working day travelling further.
A delivery company may need additional vehicles.
A fishing business may have to travel much further to obtain supplies.
The economic cost quickly becomes much greater than the price displayed on the petrol pump.
And this brings us to electric cars
There is an interesting unintended lesson here.
An electric car doesn't need a petrol station.
That doesn't make it immune from energy disruption — far from it. Electricity has its own infrastructure vulnerabilities.
But the nature of the dependency is different.
A household with an electric car and a home charger effectively has its own "refuelling station".
If you have a driveway, you don't need to make a special journey to buy fuel.
You plug the car in when you return home.
The electricity can come through the national grid rather than arriving by tanker at a filling station.
That gives the household a degree of energy independence for transport that a conventional petrol or diesel car cannot provide.
And Highland is already developing the alternative infrastructure.
Highland Council says it currently hosts more than 90 public EV charge points, while the wider charging network includes private operators as well.
Back in 2023, the council reported 91 public charge points, including 52 journey chargers of 43kW and above, with further installations planned.
The wider UK charging network has also expanded rapidly. Zapmap reports that the UK had 28,887 rapid and ultra-rapid chargers by the end of June 2026, up 16% year-on-year.
That doesn't mean Highland has suddenly solved its charging problem.
It hasn't.
A rural driver needs to know that a charger will be available when they need it, that it will work, and that there is sufficient range to reach the next one.
But the direction of travel is clear.
An electric car changes the resilience equation
This is perhaps the strongest argument for considering an electric vehicle that is rarely discussed.
We normally talk about EVs in terms of emissions, running costs and fuel savings.
But there is another characteristic:
You can refuel at home.
Imagine a prolonged national fuel shortage.
The petrol driver joins a queue.
Perhaps there is a 30-litre purchase limit.
Perhaps the station is temporarily closed.
Perhaps the next station is 25 miles away.
The EV owner who charged overnight simply gets into the car and leaves.
Of course, if the electricity supply itself is disrupted, the EV owner has a problem.
But that is a different kind of problem.
And if you have solar panels, a home battery or access to other local generation, the potential resilience becomes even more interesting.
But we shouldn't pretend EVs solve everything
There is a danger of turning this into an argument that electric cars are automatically the answer to every rural transport problem.
They aren't.
Highland presents particular challenges.
Distances are long.
Weather can be severe.
Public charging infrastructure needs to keep expanding.
Some homes don't have driveways.
People towing trailers or travelling extremely long distances have different requirements.
And the electricity network itself has to cope with growing demand.
The solution therefore isn't:
"Everyone must immediately buy an electric car."
It is:
"If you are replacing your car anyway, perhaps resilience should be one of the things you consider."
That is a much more practical argument.
The petrol station network will remain important for years
Even if every new car sold eventually becomes electric, petrol and diesel won't disappear overnight.
There will be millions of conventional vehicles on Britain's roads for many years.
Trucks, agricultural machinery, construction equipment, fishing vessels and other heavy-duty applications also have different energy requirements.
Highland will therefore continue to need conventional fuel infrastructure for some considerable time.
The question is whether we should regard the remaining filling stations as simply commercial businesses or as part of the region's strategic infrastructure.
I think the answer is increasingly obvious.
They are both.
A filling station has to make enough money to survive.
But the community has an interest in ensuring that enough strategically located stations remain viable.
There is another lesson here for local communities
We tend to notice infrastructure when it fails.
The bridge becomes important when it closes.
The road becomes important when it is blocked.
The electricity supply becomes important when the lights go out.
And the filling station becomes important when the pumps stop working.
Perhaps resilience planning should work the other way around.
We should identify the infrastructure we cannot afford to lose before it fails.
Highland Council and the Scottish Government could reasonably ask:
Where are our most vulnerable fuel-dependent communities?
Which filling stations are the only suppliers within a particular radius?
How many stations could close before emergency services face problems?
Where would alternative fuel supplies come from?
How quickly could fuel be transported to remote communities?
Which stations might be suitable for both petrol/diesel and rapid EV charging?
Those are not questions about war.
They are questions about economic resilience.
And perhaps there is an opportunity hidden in the problem
Imagine a rural filling station that knows its petrol and diesel business will eventually decline.
Instead of simply closing, it could evolve.
Petrol and diesel today.
Rapid EV charging tomorrow.
A café.
A small shop.
Parcel collection.
Toilets.
Local produce.
Perhaps a workspace or community facility.
The filling station becomes a rural mobility hub rather than simply a place to buy fuel.
That could be particularly valuable in Highland.
The transition from petrol and diesel to electric vehicles doesn't necessarily have to mean the disappearance of the rural filling station.
It could mean its reinvention.
The real warning from Ukraine
The lesson isn't that Highland should be afraid that its petrol stations might be attacked.
The lesson is that fuel infrastructure matters far more than we normally realise.
Ukraine has demonstrated how quickly attacks on relatively ordinary-looking infrastructure can affect logistics, businesses and daily life.
Highland's geography makes it particularly exposed to disruption because there are relatively few filling stations spread across an enormous area.
And that should make us think differently about the way we travel.
For someone considering replacing a car in the next few years, the question isn't simply:
"Is an electric car greener?"
It could also be:
"Would I rather depend on finding a filling station every few hundred miles, or have the ability to refuel at home?"
For someone living in a Highland village, that is a surprisingly important question.
An electric car won't make you immune from energy shortages.
It won't eliminate the need for roads.
It won't solve Highland's charging challenges.
But it can remove one particular dependency:
the need to have a functioning petrol station somewhere nearby whenever you need to travel.
And perhaps that is a factor worth adding to the debate.
Because when everything is working normally, we take fuel stations for granted.
It is only when the pumps stop working that we discover how much of our economy depends upon them.
And the most resilient transport system for Highland may ultimately be one in which we don't rely on just one way of keeping our vehicles moving.