21st September 2026
Most people think about diesel when they pull into a filling station.
But the price of diesel matters to almost everyone, including people who never drive a diesel car.
That is because diesel is part of the machinery that keeps the modern economy moving. It powers a large part of road freight, agriculture, construction and distribution. When diesel becomes more expensive, the effect does not stop at the filling station.
It gradually works its way through the supply chain.
That is particularly relevant now because the international diesel market is under pressure from several directions at once.
Russian refinery capacity has been disrupted by repeated Ukrainian attacks. Saudi Arabia has suffered damage to its East-West oil pipeline and has had to rearrange the way it moves crude. European refiners are having to compete for alternative supplies at a time when diesel markets are already tight. The International Energy Agency says global seaborne diesel and gasoil exports were 10% lower in the first eight months of 2026 than a year earlier.
None of this means Britain is about to run out of diesel.
That is an important distinction.
Britain has emergency oil stocks and a diversified network of suppliers. The Government says the UK held stocks equivalent to around 120 days of net imports in July 2025, compared with the International Energy Agency requirement of at least 90 days.
The more immediate concern is what happens when fuel becomes more expensive.
Consider a loaf of bread.
The farmer may use diesel to operate machinery. The grain may then travel to a mill. Flour has to reach a bakery. The finished bread then has to be transported to a distribution centre or shop.
The same principle applies to milk, meat, vegetables and almost everything else that moves around the country.
The fuel cost is only one part of the final price, so a 10p increase in diesel does not translate into a 10p increase in the price of a loaf of bread.
But when thousands of businesses are making thousands of journeys, even relatively small increases can add up.
For a rural area such as Caithness, distance makes this particularly relevant.
Goods coming into Wick or Thurso have often travelled a considerable distance before they reach the shop. The journey may involve several stages, and diesel is an input at more than one point.
The same applies to building materials, parcels, machinery and many of the services on which rural businesses depend.
There is another vulnerability which is perhaps less obvious.
Britain's food system operates to a large extent on a just-in-time basis.
That does not mean supermarkets have exactly three days' food in their warehouses. There is no reliable single figure that applies to every retailer or every product.
What it does mean is that businesses generally do not hold enormous stocks of everything they sell.
The Government's UK Food Security Report says that little stock is held "on hand" by operators in parts of the food supply chain because supplies are purchased as needed. The report specifically warns that the just-in-time system is sensitive to transport disruption, particularly because road freight is the main means of moving goods.
That creates both an efficiency and a vulnerability.
Holding huge quantities of food would be expensive and, for fresh produce, often impossible. A supermarket does not want to fill warehouses with weeks of lettuce, milk or bread.
The advantage is efficiency.
The disadvantage is that the system needs to keep moving.
If trucks keep arriving, the shelves can look perfectly normal even though there may not be a huge amount of spare stock behind them.
If transport is disrupted, however, the effects can appear surprisingly quickly in particular products.
This is where the Government's increasing interest in resilience becomes interesting.
The UK now has an official Prepare website which encourages households to think about how they would manage during emergencies and disruption. The advice covers basic supplies, communications, power cuts, severe weather and other situations.
The Government's 2026 Resilience Action Plan goes further. It says new household advice on preparing for disruption will be supported by a multi-year national campaign, and that the campaign will be anchored in GOV.UK/Prepare.
That is not evidence that the Government expects supermarkets to run out of food.
It is something more sensible.
It is an acknowledgement that modern society depends upon a large number of systems working together, and that households can be better prepared for temporary disruption without knowing exactly what might cause it.
The Government's latest public survey of preparedness also shows that this is becoming a serious area of public policy. More than 10,000 UK adults took part in the 2026 survey, which examines how people view risks and what they are doing to prepare for emergencies.
The Prepare website is therefore worth knowing about.
It is not a prediction of an impending crisis. It is not a recommendation to go out and fill a garage with food.
It is an attempt to encourage people to have a little resilience in their household so that a temporary interruption does not immediately become a personal crisis.
That seems particularly relevant when looking at the diesel market.
A diesel shortage is only one possible disruption. A power cut, severe storm, cyberattack, flooding, transport problem or interruption to communications could have similar effects on parts of the supply chain.
The lesson is not that Britain's food system is fragile and about to collapse.
In fact, the Government's own food-security assessment points out that Britain has successfully maintained food availability through several major shocks in recent years.
The lesson is that resilience is not the same as having enormous stockpiles.
It means having enough alternative suppliers, enough transport capacity, enough fuel, enough flexibility in the system and enough household preparation to absorb a temporary problem.
For Caithness, there is a further consideration.
We are a long way from many of the distribution centres and production sites that supply the country. That distance is usually just an inconvenience because the road network works and the lorries arrive.
But when fuel prices rise sharply, or when transport itself is disrupted, distance becomes more important.
That is why the price of diesel deserves to be watched for reasons that go far beyond the motorist.
The price on the forecourt is the most visible part of the story.
The less visible part is the cost of keeping Britain's food and goods moving.
And perhaps that is why the Government is increasingly talking about resilience.
Not because it knows that a particular crisis is coming, but because it knows that in a complicated world it is impossible to know exactly which link in the chain might be tested next.
Web Sites with useful information for emergencies
UK Government Prepare
Scottish Government - Prepare your household and community for emergencies