Australia's emergency plan starts with carpooling, escalates to fuel caps

While there is a serious real crisis that has yet to materialise when storage of refined oil and petrochemicals from the Middle East's very large and now damaged or destroyed refineries reaches near empty, Australia's Day Two fuel crisis after the US declared war against Iran, was more a product of media hysteria - with a hint of political motivation.

Much like the toilet paper saga from 2020, people like myself wonder why given even if some people stockpile, a shortage regardless of an expectation the overall sale quantity should not change or vary that much over a given period - ie number of weeks. However here toilet paper prices never really came down, and still it seems that only premium toilet paper brands can be depended on to be regularly stocked in stores in my locale.

Obviously there should be an emergency plan for the fuel sector ... but some people are not happy until they see some specified numbers when at most can only be speculation based on limited scenarios - since any such plan has to account for a number of different types of emergencies.

I fear in three to four months when the real fuel crisis begins to hit home ... there'll be a shortage of bicycles new or second hand. :)

Won't fuel caps distort the market, causing widespread shortages or some other problems that would be worse than just letting people make their own choices about driving or not based on gasoline ("petrol") prices?