Yesterday I noticed the petrol tank in my car was down to a quarter of a tank, and thought I’d better fill it up.\u00a0 So I went, at 11am, to do so.\u00a0 Unfortunately, nobody seemed to sell any.\u00a0 It had all frozen up, after a night of temperatures which were about -10, which by Russian standards is barbecue weather.\u00a0 The petrol station I tried was owned and operated by a large and important company whose corporate colours are black and yellow.\u00a0 For the sake of future business, I will say no more.\u00a0 This petrol station had been revamped in the summer, complete with new underground storage tanks.\u00a0 A month into a mild winter, and it was unable to dispense petrol before lunchtime, a pattern repeated in every other petrol station about town.<\/p>\n
In addition, there is no diesel on the island.\u00a0 The refinery which supplies Sakhalin is on the mainland (there is no refinery on Sakhalin), and apparently there was some kind of problem there with the net result being Sakhalin Island has no diesel.<\/p>\n
Bear all this in mind next time you read about entire populations of Western European countries\u00a0relying on Russia to heat their homes for the next twenty years.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Yesterday I noticed the petrol tank in my car was down to a quarter of a tank, and thought I’d better fill it up.\u00a0 So I went, at 11am, to do so.\u00a0 Unfortunately, nobody seemed to sell any.\u00a0 It had … Continue reading