US cede energy waste crown

It looks like the US will face a new year of Independence with one less world crown. We have always been assured that the US is te most wasteful energy consumer, but it looks like upstart, Iran, has seized the title.

IRANIAN motorists have long been pampered with the cheapest petrol in the world: they can fill up at just 5p a litre (10c).

Such prices have unsurprisingly encouraged wastefulness. A quarter of a million litres of petrol is splashed on to filling station floors daily by careless motorists, according to government estimates.

While Iran is a major oil producer, its refineries have a capacity of just 40 million litres of petrol a day: demand is close to 70 million litres.

The shortfall is imported at great cost to the government because it is sold at heavily subsidised prices to the consumer. Much is then smuggled to Iran's neighbours where petrol prices are far higher, costing the Iranian government more than £542 million a year.

One wily taxi driver in Teheran says: "Rationing would be a negative step. Why can they not just build a couple more refineries? It will open up the black market because people will start buying and selling their ration coupons."

Yes sir, don’t dare take away one of the few rights Iranians have, the right to splash gas around like the waves sluicing onto a beach.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has estimated that without rationing, Iran would need to spend £2.7 billion to import enough extra fuel to keep pace with demand.

To overcome the refining shortfall, Iran is pushing ahead with a £6.5 billion refinery expansion programme to make it once more self-sufficient in petrol.

It’s all a middle eastern plot…