British electricity companies say millions of UK households are entering “energy poverty” and will stop paying their electric bills or drastically cut their use of electricity, according to Bloomberg News April 19, “Energy Debt Owed by UK Families To Leap 50%, CEOs Say.” Testifying to a parliamentary committee, E.ON SE’s chief executive officer Michael Lewis said, “We are expecting a severe impact on customers’ ability to pay. That will see a significantly larger number of people moving into fuel poverty ... and a consequent significant increase in bad debt. Government action won’t be nearly enough to mitigate.” Keith Anderson, CEO of Scottish Power Ltd, testified further: “Come October, that’s going to get horrific, truly horrific. The size and scale of this is beyond what I can deal with, beyond what I think the industry can deal with.” And the British Office of National Statistics shows average real earnings in the UK having fallen by roughly 1.5% per month for the past four months.
This was all prior to the leak by Reuters on April 20 that European countries would ban all Russian oil imports, beginning next week, which produced a JPMorgan Chase bank forecast of a Brent Crude oil price of $185 barrel by early Fall. The embargo has not been announced yet, in order not to give Marine Le Pen an issue, according to Reuters.
