Some European drivers feel a gentler squeeze

Press, 10 May 1979, Page 8

Some European drivers feel a gentler squeeze

NZPA-Reuter London Yugoslavia now bans half its cars from the roads on six days each month, the other half on six other days. Belgium has rationed heating fuel for homes, offices, and factories. About half the governments in Western Europe are trying in various, mainly voluntary, ways to get their people to cut down on energy consumption. Italian officials feel they should be doing the same, but their plans are hampered by political wrangling. The world oil shortage now causing long queues at California petrol stations has had very limited and uneven

effect in Western Europe, an NZPA Reuter survey snows. West Germany, Britain, and Switzerland expect no problems over oil supplies this year. “It can’t happen here,” a Government official said in Bonn.

Mr Martin Gruener, Secretary of State in the West German Economics Ministry, told a radio interviewer that the fall in America’s crude oil stocks had been caused by the low price of petrol there, which made the United States an unattractive market for oil suppliers. West Germany paid the full market price for oil and would run short only if there was a big drop in world production, he said.

The Bonn Government has printed a stock of petrol-ra-tion cards just in case, and, like France, the Netherlands, Norway, and Sweden, have called on their citizens to conserve energy. The French Prime Minister (Mr Raymond Barre) went on television to say that energy saving was a “European duty” and to tell Frenchmen to try harder.

No rationing was expected in France, however, officials said.

Britain and Norway, with oil wells in the North Sea, are the most comfortably placed of European countries, and officials in Berne believe Switzerland will be able to buy all the oil it needs this year.