Consumer panic

not necessary

FOOD and petrol supplies are un likely to be affected by the Gulf War, unless the crisis continues for a lengthy period, according to two key groups.

A spokesman for Morris Hedstrom said that supplies had not been affected by the crisis and there was no need for customers to stockpile.

The General Manager for Shell South Pacific, Joe Mar, said swings in the price

of crude oil had not been dramatic.

In July the price was $23 per barrel.

Three days after Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait on August 3, the price went up to $3O per barrel. In September and October it went up to $44 per barrel, but by the first week in January it had dropped back to $25. It then rose to $3O just before the deadline of January 15.

By January 16, when the Allied Forces looked like walking over Iraq, the price collapsed back to $22 per barrel and dropped to $l9 then $lB per barrel.

“It is impossible to make predictions the price of crude oil is as volatile as the situation in the Middle East,” Mar

said. “However, there is no need to panic. The price hasn’t even hit $5O so far. In the early 1980 s it went up as high as $5O per barrel with OPEC’s restricted quota.”

He said there was enough oil in the system to cover a short-term war, of up to two months.

“The only danger would be if the war was a long, drawn-out one; or if the Saudi Arabian oilfields were destroyed.

If the war is drawn out, there is still the capacity to produce and the fluctuation would probably only be by a narrow

margin.” D