ALMARIA VELLA — The Prime Minister's Office confirmed yesterday that the emergency cabinet sub-committee on energy costs will convene before the end of the week, with the national fuel-stabilisation reserve placed formally upon its agenda. The confirmation follows Monday's move in the global crude benchmarks, which carried Almarian pump prices to levels last seen three summers ago, and a letter from the Chamber of Commerce couched in language that body rarely permits itself.

Haulage cooperatives along the Cordoba coast and the fishing fleets of Sant Joan have been, by the Chamber's account, the first to feel the margin squeeze. A fisherman of the northern mole, reached at his nets, offered the view that "the sea does not care what the ministers decide, but the diesel does." It is not a sentiment that will be quoted in the sub-committee's minutes; it will nonetheless be present in the room.

Don Cordoba's counsel, relayed through intermediaries to the Prime Minister's office, is understood to favour a measured and temporary draw upon the reserve, coupled with a review — not a repeal — of the haulage rebate schedule. The patriarch is said to regard any larger intervention as "a door one ought not to open in a week of ambassadors."

Opposition voices, led as ever by Mr Renko, have demanded a fuller release and an inquiry into what they call the "ledger" binding fuel policy to foreign policy. The Herald will report the sub-committee's decision when it is taken; speculation, on this page at least, will not precede it.