$380 A BARREL OIL?
JP Morgan Contemplates $380 Oil-You Need To Contemplate No Gas, No Groceries, No Job and No Home

By Stan Szymanski

Bloomberg has reported that JP Morgan Sees ‘Stratospheric’ $380 Oil if US and European retributions prod Russia to exact punitory crude output cuts.

The article goes on to state that because of the new found economic strength of Russia, Putins’ nation could afford to cut production as much as 5 million barrels a day. JP Morgan proposes that a cut of 3 million barrels/day could push oil to $190 a barrel. A cut of 5 million barrels may catapult crude to as much as $380.

The current United States administration and NATO want a war with Russia. Georgia Republican Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene urges the US to leave NATO to avoid a war with Russia. Will our government leaders listen to her? Very doubtful. What does $380 oil and war with Russia mean to we, the American people?

If Russia were to cut oil production that would result in $380 oil, the purpose of that would be to weaken America before it was attacked.

$380 oil means $20+ per gallon diesel. $380 oil means $17+ per gallon gasoline.

If gasoline is $17/gallon, will you be able to afford to drive to work? If you drive an SUV and it gets 17 MPG between city and highway driving and you have to drive 25 miles each way to work, that’s basically a use case of 3 gallons/day times $17 a gallon or a cost of $51/day just to gas up for the day. That is $1,000 per month just to drive back and forth to work. Add in maintenance and insurance and all of a sudden 50-75% of American will not be able to afford the cost of simply going to work. At that point, how will you make a living for your family? Better get a bicycle now, get into shape and hope it doesn’t snow in the winter (turn off sarcasm now). Additionally, if Russia cuts 5 million barrels of oil a day from the markets, will there even be any gas to be had in a land where the strategic petroleum reserve has been drawn down to 25 days?

If diesel is $20/gallon, will over the road truckers roll if it cost between $3,000 and $4,000 a day to fill up their rigs? I hardly think so. If semis don’t move, how will groceries-meat, milk, eggs, grains, bread and vegetables get to your supermarket? They won’t. If there are no groceries to buy, what will you do for food? Better learn how to make ‘sawdust sourdough’ like the inhabitants of St. Petersburg did during the siege of Leningrad during World War 2.

If you can’t afford to drive to your job, you will have no job. If you have no job, you will not be able to pay your bills. If you can’t pay your bills you will lose your home or apartment. If you lose your home you will be homeless.

Did you plant a garden? Are you thinking of another source of revenue that you can do from home? Do you have a ‘country cousin’ you can stay with when the major cities in this country erupt into violence when food riots are part of everyday life? Can you consider buying a piece of property in the country (that has a well) and putting a shed on it to have someplace to go to when even the suburbs become untenable and neighbors prey upon neighbors because there is no other option?

I don’t know what a war with Russia would exactly look like. But if America was in a weakened state it may be that Russia would nuke a few major US cities and strategic areas before we knew what hit us. You see, Russia has weapons known as ‘hypersonic’ missiles capable of deploying many warheads from one one missile that are too fast to intercept. The US does -not- have hypersonic missiles to currently compete with Russia and essentially, cannot defend against these high technology armaments. The US is working to catch up. But if you were the Russians, would you wait until your enemy caught up with your hi-tech, or would you punch them in the nose right now? The administration should listen to Represent Greene. But they won’t.

None of this adds up to anything good for the average American. $380 oil equates to no gas, no groceries, no job and no home for a lot of US citizens. Financial markets would be shredded except for the -physical- precious metals and commodities. Please carefully consider the ramifications of this potential scenario and do the best you can for your family. Now.

We need to stop all support to Ukraine before it is too late. Biden needs to be legally removed at once. It looks like it will be either economic collapse and/or nuclear war with Russian and China. The Globalists and the deep state want to kill Americans and they want to destroy the USA.
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"Confirmed: The CIA is running Ukraine’s fight against Russia"
July 4, 2022
https://www.naturalnews.com/2022-07-04-confirmed-cia-running-ukraine-fight-against-russia.html

"Foreign Policy Fail: Biden’s Sanctions are a Windfall For Russia! – Ron Paul"
https://www.infowars.com/posts/fore...tions-are-a-windfall-for-russia-ron-paul

The Gas Inflation Crisis Is Far From Over,

by Brandon Smith


After a single Federal Reserve rate hike of 75 basis points (0.75%) I am noticing a trend among mainstream economists whipping out their crystal balls and predicting an almost immediate reversion to deflationary conditions. In their view, a recession will “balance everything out.” For most of these people, I would suggest that they keep their crystal balls in their pants; they have been consistently wrong and it’s time for them to shut up. If you were predicting that inflation would be “transitory” last year, then you have no right to act like you are an economist today.

It’s going to take a lot more than one semi-aggressive rate hike from the central bank to stop the inflation problem, and when I say “inflation” I am talking about PRICE INFLATION, not the mere increase of the money supply or a bubble in stock markets. There are far too many financial analysts out there that don’t even grasp what true inflation really entails.

There are certain sectors of the economy that will indeed see deflationary pressures. Real GDP, for example, is witnessing declines. Retail sales are in decline. US wages are stagnant in comparison to prices. Housing sales are now falling rapidly. Manufacturing is dropping. Yet, prices continue to remain high. Clearly there is a mix of inflationary and deflationary elements within the same economic crisis. In other words, it’s a stagflation event.

An area in which prices continue to climb without much relent is energy. The mainstream blames this almost entirely on Russia’s conflict with Ukraine and the evolving sanctions against Russian oil and natural gas. However, gas prices were spiking well before Russia ever invaded Ukraine. Inflation in the overall economy hit 40-year highs long before Ukraine became an issue, as Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell finally admitted this past week.

Let’s not pretend like we don’t know the cause of all of this. It is caused by fiat money printing by the Federal Reserve since 2008, and central banks in general are the culprits. The bankers can fund or refuse to fund whatever they wish. Government politicians play their role in creating inflation by ASKING for the money, but it is the Fed that decides if they create the money. The government has zero power to dictate policy to the Fed; as Alan Greenspan once admitted, the Fed answers to no one.

The central bank could print us into oblivion if they wished, and this is essentially what they have done. That said, there are other elements to our current crisis beyond too many dollars. There is also the issue of supply chain disruptions.

I am specifically reminded of the stagflation threat that occurred in 1970s. The oil and stagflation crisis of the late 1970s ran its course right before I was born, so obviously I can’t give a first hand accounting of what it was like, but when I study the events that led up to it I find a lot of similarities to the situation we are facing today. Though, the crisis that is developing right now has the potential to become far worse.

In the early 1970s Richard Nixon, at the request of central bankers, removed the dollar from the last vestiges of the gold standard. Central banks shifted away from gold as the primary trade mechanism between governments and started switching over to Special Drawing Rights; the IMF’s basket currency system. Not surprisingly, the dollar began an immediate spiral and its buying power began to crash. Stagflation became a household concern throughout the 1970s.

This problem was mitigated eventually as the dollar’s world reserve status grew. Basically, we exported many of our dollars overseas for use in global trade, and by extension we also exported a lot of our inflation/stagflation. As long as the dollar remained the premier reserve currency, most of the consequences of central bank fiat printing would not be felt by the general populace. In terms of gasoline, the dollar has been the petro-currency for decades which allowed us to keep prices in the US lower than in many countries.

But things are changing. The dollar’s portion of global trade has been in decline for the past several years, and the Fed just keeps creating more greenbacks from nothing. In 2020 alone, the Fed conjured $6 trillion to fuel the covid stimulus response, pumping all that money directly into the system through covid checks and PPP loans. In order for this process to continue, the dollar’s global percentage of trade would have to keep growing in order to export US inflation overseas. This is not happening. The dollar’s percentage of global trade is in reversion.

We are dealing with the end of a cycle that started in the 1970s. We are going back to the beginning.

Furthermore, the gas crisis in the late 70s and early 80s was also driven by the Iranian revolution and the removal of Iranian oil supplies from the global market. This created a loss of around 7% of total oil from markets, but it resulted in gas prices exploding from 65 cents in 1978 to $1.35 in 1981. Prices more than doubled in the span of three years and never went back to where they were before the crisis.

As in the late 1970s, we also have a supply chain issue with an OPEC nation. The Russian portion of the global oil production was around 10% in 2020, but the nation is the 2nd largest oil exporter in the world. Only 3% of oil imported into the US comes from Russia, but Europe relies on Russia for around 25% of its total oil consumption.

The EU now supposedly cutting off that supply of oil, though there are questions surrounding loopholes and how much Russian oil is actually still being supplied to European nations. As sanctions continue, the EU will have to go to other exporters to get what they need and this is reducing the amount of supply available to western countries. The Russians have simply adapted, and are now selling more oil as a discount to major eastern markets like China and India. But for the rest of us, Europe’s thirst for oil is going to continue to cause price expansion as supplies falter.

So where does this leave us? Our situation is similar to the gas crisis of the late 1970s because we have ongoing stagflation, a weakening currency as well as a major economic conflict with an OPEC producer. That said, things are measurably worse than the 1970s for a few reasons, notably the fact that our country is in far more debt, foreign treasury and dollar holdings are in decline, and the conflict with Russia is far more egregious than our troubles with Iran in the 70s.

I suspect we will see at least a 300% markup in gas prices from pre-pandemic lows, which were around $2.60 per gallon for regular. Meaning, prices will continue to climb over the course of this year and level out around $7.50 per gallon by the second quarter of 2023. I am basing the pace of the price increases according to the pace that occurred from 1979-1981.

Obviously, there will be market dips and pauses, but it is unlikely we will see prices at the pump fall dramatically anytime soon. There will be endless predictions in the mainstream media about when inflation will stop and many pundits will claim that the Fed will capitulate soon on rate hikes. All this clamor will affect oil markets to a point, but prices will continue to rise regardless.

Some people will argue that declining demand will stop rising prices, however, the stagflation problem does not only revolve around demand, there are many other factors at play. Unless we see a drop in demand similar to what we saw at the beginning of the pandemic lockdowns, there is little chance there will be a meaningful reversal.

Also, for anyone hoping that US shale or OPEC will pick up the slack from Russia, this is not going to happen. Oil industry experts have already noted that because of inflation and lack of manpower there will not be a major uptick in oil pumping and so shortages will continue for some time.

What does this mean for the wider economy? Inflation in necessities like gasmuch means an implosion in retail. People will divert funds away from other purchases to cover gas and energy costs. Expensive gas also means expensive freight rates, which means higher prices for everything else on the store shelves. Expensive gas will also cause smaller freight companies to go bankrupt or close up shop, along with much higher interest rates being instituted by the Fed. My own grandfather lost his trucking and freight company in the 1970s for this exact reason.

In turn, less freight means less supply, which in turn means higher prices on everything. It’s a terrible cycle. The point is, you should expect gas prices to remain very high (into the $7 per gallon range) over the course of the next year, and this will affect EVERYTHING else in terms of your pocketbook and your life. Don’t put too much stock in the people claiming deflation is on the way; not in prices of necessities it’s not.

Eventually, lack of demand will slow price increases but not until we are much higher than the current national average of $5 a gallon. And, if you live in a state with high gas taxes like California, then be prepared for double digit costs at the pump.

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This is outrageous we can't afford diesel and gas prices and it is causing economic collapse. Our oil reserve should saved for the United States in case of war but Biden is sending our oil reserves to other countries. This treason should be all over the major news media but it is not being covered. Biden should be impeached for treason now.
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Over 5 million barrels of US reserve oil were exported to Asia and Europe last month as domestic refineries run at full capacity, report says
Brian Evans
7-6-2022
https://markets.businessinsider.com...-asia-europe-exports-russia-crude-2022-7

Over 5 million barrels of US reserve oil were exported to Asia and Europe last month as domestic refineries run at full capacity, report says



Over 5 million barrels of oil from the US reserve were sent overseas in June, Reuters reported.
The Biden administration has been tapping the reserve to try to bring down fuel prices.
The exports follow similar shipments in April, when ships went to Europe to replace Russian oil.

More than 5 million barrels of oil from the US Strategic Petroleum Reserve were exported to Asia and Europe last month, Reuters first reported.

Among the shipments were two cargo ships carrying 560,000 barrels each from Atlantic Trading & Marketing, part of France's TotalEnergies, according to Reuters. And Phillips 66, the fourth-largest oil supplier in the US, sent about 470,000 barrels from a storage facility in Texas to Trieste, Italy, where a pipeline feeds refineries in central Europe.

The exports follow similar shipments of Strategic Petroleum Reserve crude in April, when three ships went to Europe to replace Russian oil.

Overall, US oil exports have been surging since Russia invaded Ukraine in February as Western countries and companies turn away from Russian supplies.

While gas prices typically follow oil prices, which are set by global markets, US refineries have been a key bottleneck. Because of earlier shutdowns and limited investment in recent years, capacity has shrunk and refineries have been running nearly at full tilt.

With little extra scope for refining more volumes of fuel, additional supplies of crude, including from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, have been going overseas. In fact, oil exports from the US Gulf Coast hit a record rate in the second quarter, according to Rystad Energy.

The Biden administration has been releasing oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to try to lower fuel prices. Releases are at a record pace of roughly 1 million barrels a day, bringing the stockpile to the lowest level since 1986 in June.

Early last month, the average gallon of gas in the US climbed to a record high of $5. Gas prices have been coming down for the past three weeks, though they remain elevated. And oil prices have fallen amid fears of a
recession
and the rising dollar.

"Crude and fuel prices would likely be higher if [the SPR releases] hadn't happened, but at the same time, it isn't really having the effect that was assumed," Matt Smith, a Kpler oil analyst, told Reuters.

With Strategic Petroleum Reserve at lowest level since 1985, US sells stockpiled oil to China

via Just the News

While U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve stockpiles have fallen to their lowest level since 1985, every congressional Democrat voted Wednesday to continue sending oil from the SPR to China.

Supplies have continuously dwindled since President Joe Biden entered office, but they started rapidly declining after Russia invaded Ukraine. In response, Biden sold millions more barrels from the reserves in April.

During Biden’s first month in office, the U.S. had about 638 million barrels in its reserve. By March, one month into Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, reserves had fallen to 565 million barrels, and by July, 480 million barrels were left in the SPR, according to data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

America’s reserves have not been so low since June 1985, when the country was still building the SPR.

Last week, Biden touted his actions to bring down oil prices. “I’ve been releasing about 1 million barrels of oil a day from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve and rallied our global partners to release a combined 240 million barrels of oil onto the market,” he tweeted. “Our actions are working, and prices are coming down.”

While average U.S. gas prices have tapered down from a peak of $5 a gallon — their highest level ever — gas is still significantly more expensive under Biden than under any previous administration, GasBuddy data shows.

In response to the dwindling SPR, Rep. David Valadao (R-Calif.) offered a motion in the House last week to “immediately consider legislation that would prohibit the sale of oil drawn from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to entities under the control of the Chinese Communist Party or for export to China,” he said in a press release.

Every House Democrat voted against his motion.

That same day, 19 House Republicans sent a letter to Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm demanding to know why her department sold nearly a billion barrels of SPR oil to an American subsidiary of Sinopec, a Chinese company in which Hunter Biden invested heavily.

Earlier this month, Republican Senators introduced legislation seeking to stop oil sales to China, Russia, North Korea and Iran.

“It’s inexplicable that Biden would allow oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to be exported to China,” Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) said at the time.

We Are Going To See Energy Prices Go Absolutely Nuts This Winter Just As We Plunge Into A Horrifying Global Economic Crisis
July 26, 2022 by Michael


How would you feel if your power bill went up by 50 percent this winter? How about 100 percent? Unfortunately, these kinds of price increases are already being announced. The world was heading into a major energy crisis even before the war in Ukraine started, and now that conflict threatens to create an extremely severe energy crunch that would have been unimaginable just a couple of years ago. If some sort of a miracle doesn’t happen, it is going to be a really, really cold winter for countless people in the western world.

The Russians have been trying to use energy as leverage, and on Monday they announced that the amount of natural gas flowing through the Nord Stream 1 pipeline will be reduced “to just 20% of its capacity”…

The Biden administration is working furiously behind the scenes to keep European allies united against Russia as Moscow further cuts its energy supplies to the European Union, prompting panic on both sides of the Atlantic over potentially severe gas shortages heading into winter, US officials say.

On Monday, Russia’s state-owned gas company Gazprom said it would cut flows through the Nord Stream 1 pipeline to Germany in half, to just 20% of its capacity. A US official said the move was retaliation for western sanctions, and that it put the West in “unchartered territory” when it comes to whether Europe will have enough gas to get through the winter.

In essence, Vladimir Putin is “turning the screws”, and it may just be a matter of time before he cuts off the gas completely.

The Europeans never should have allowed themselves to become so dependent on Russian energy, and now a major crisis is staring them in the face.

Last Wednesday, a modest rationing plan for the member states of the EU was introduced…

The “Save Gas for a Safe Winter” plan announced Wednesday sets a target for the 27 member states to reduce their gas demand by 15% between August and March next year. That reduction is based on countries’ average gas consumption during the same months over the previous five years.

The plan is focused on curtailing demand by businesses and in public buildings, rather than private homes. Among the proposed measures, the EU Commission is encouraging industry to switch to alternate energy sources — including coal where necessary — and to introduce auction systems that compensate companies for reducing their gas consumption.

Of course such a plan is going to be almost impossible to enforce, and even if all of the member states meet their goals it still won’t be enough if the Russians stop the flow of gas entirely.

The U.S. has been ramping up exports to Europe in an effort to help, and one official is openly admitting that this could cause a dramatic increase in prices here in the United States…

“This was our biggest fear,” said the US official. The impact on Europe could boomerang back onto the US, spiking natural gas and electricity prices, the official said. It will also be a major test of European resilience and unity against Russia, as the Kremlin shows no signs of retreating from Ukraine.

Sadly, we are already starting to see the price of natural gas rise to very alarming levels.

According to Wolf Richter, the price of U.S. natural gas has “more than doubled” over the past year…

So here we go again. This morning, natural gas futures jumped to $8.29 per million Btu, adding to the jumps over the past week. The price has regained much of the lost spike, and is up about 30% from a month ago, and has more than doubled from a year ago.

Ouch.

Needless to say, U.S. consumers are going to be feeling a tremendous amount of pain this winter.

For example, just check out the rate hikes that were just announced in New Hampshire…

Electricity bills in New Hampshire are about to get higher.

Eversource is raising its energy supply rate by about 50% on Aug. 1. With customers using, on average, 25% more energy in the summer, a typical customer could expect to see a $70 monthly increase, the utility said.

The energy service rate for New Hampshire Electric Co-op will go up 77%, Liberty Utilities will jump 100% and Eversource’s rate will rise by 112%.

In the coming months, we will see similar rate hikes all over the nation.

So are you ready for your power bill to soar into the stratosphere?

And all of this comes at a time when the percentage of U.S. adults that are “having difficulties paying their bills” has just hit a brand new high…

The share of Americans who report having difficulties paying their bills has surpassed its 2020 pandemic peak in a US Census Bureau survey, underscoring the toll of soaring prices on budgets.

Four in ten adults said it has been somewhat or very difficult to cover usual household expenses in a poll conducted end of June and early July. That’s the highest since the Census started asking the question in August 2020. It implies that more than 90 million families are struggling, up from about 60 million a year ago.

As I discussed yesterday, a recession in the United States is already here.

Will the entire world soon follow?

On Tuesday, the IMF warned that we could be on the verge of a major global economic slowdown…

The global economy is already in trouble, yet risks keep piling up.

In a report released Tuesday, the International Monetary Fund once again lowered its world economic forecast as it predicted major slowdowns in the three biggest economies: the United States, China and Europe.

Those downturns, combined with the ongoing war in Ukraine, inflation surging faster than expected, and tighter monetary policy around the world have continued to slam the already fragile global economy, it said.

It is often said that “energy is the economy”, and global supplies of energy just keep getting tighter and tighter.

There isn’t any short-term help on the horizon, and if we stay on the path that we are on this new global energy crisis is just going to get worse and worse.

Of course there is also the possibility that something could come along that could greatly accelerate our energy problems.

A Chinese invasion of Taiwan is likely to happen at some point, and I have been warning that a war between Israel and Iran will erupt sooner rather than later.

In either case, our new global energy crisis would rapidly evolve into a global energy nightmare.

So enjoy this relatively quiet summer while you still can, because I have a feeling that this upcoming winter is going to be quite crazy.

Don't pay high heating costs, wear extra clothes, only heat one room, and get a wood stove if you can.

Fire at Biggest US Midwest Refinery Threatens Fuel Supplies

via Yahoo / Bloomberg

An outage at the largest US Midwest refinery is raising wholesale fuel prices regionally just as the agricultural sector gears up for its busiest time of year.

BP PLC shut two crude units at its 435,000 barrel-a-day Whiting, Indiana, refinery after a fire Wednesday, Wood Mackenzie’s Genscape said. The fire occurred in the power house and caused a loss of cooling water, which could lead to damaged equipment, according to a person familiar with operations.

A prolonged shutdown of the plant, which supplies gasoline, diesel and jet fuel to most of the region’s major distribution centers, could tighten fuel markets just as farmers in the nation’s breadbasket prepare for harvesting season. Diesel demand typically starts to rise this time of year because it’s used for heating and to fuel big machinery.

Mid-continent distillate inventories, which include diesel, are at their lowest seasonally since 2006, and gasoline stockpiles are the least since 2014, according to government data. Diesel for prompt delivery traded at a 5-cent per gallon premium over early September deliveries, according to a broker. Gasoline delivered into Michigan jumped 10 cents a gallon on news of the outage as well.

A lengthy shutdown could divert crude to the storage depot in Cushing, Oklahoma. Inventories at the hub, the delivery point for benchmark US crude futures, have already risen for eight straight weeks and the prospect of further builds are weighing on futures and physical crude markets.

In the oil futures market, the US crude futures prompt spread contracted sharply, with the gap between the October and November contracts narrowing by 10 cents. WTI’s discount to international benchmark Brent crude weakened for the same reason, traders said.

A "regional emergency" is declared for Illinois, Indiana, Michigan and Wisconsin. No impact on gas prices so far, but that could change.



Read the whole thing at the link.

Onward and upward,
airforce

Mansfield Energy on "code red" as diesel crisis hit southeast.



Read the whole thing at the link.

Onward and upward,
airforce

No fuel equals no food...or anything else..

A hell of a time to buy a Class-A pusher...

The U.S. has less than a four-week supply of diesel left in storage. This could get interesting.



Onward and upward,
airforce

You might be able to convert your rear engine diesel powered motor home to run on propane.
See: https://www.fleetwiseservices.com/diesel-to-propane-conversions

Propane is my favorite fuel becasue unlike diesel and gasoline it never goes bad.

My house and 10 wooded acres probably cost me less than a Class-A pusher.

A Crippling Shortage Of Diesel Fuel Threatens To Devastate Western Economies In 2023

October 30, 2022 by Michael

In my entire lifetime, global supplies of diesel fuel have never been tighter than they are right now. And that is really bad news, because the entire economy of the western world runs on diesel. If we suddenly had no more diesel fuel, virtually all of our trains, trucks and ships would stop running. Needless to say, just about everything that stocks our store shelves comes to us via trains, trucks and ships. So the fact that there is not enough diesel fuel to go around is a really big deal. Supplies have been declining for months, and at this point diesel inventories have fallen so low that we only have a 25 day buffer remaining…

The U.S. is facing a diesel crunch just as demand is surging ahead of winter — with only 25 days of supply left, according to the Energy Information Administration.

National Economic Council Director Brian Deese told Bloomberg TV that diesel inventories are “unacceptably low” and “all options are on the table” to bolster supply and reduce prices.

Unfortunately, this is not just a problem here in the United States.

Globally, supplies of diesel fuel have fallen to the lowest level that we have seen since 1982…

“The demand for diesel tends to rise as you get close to the winter, because the molecule that makes up diesel is very similar to the molecule that you use for heating homes in the U.S., for winter fuels in Europe,” Tom Kloza, dean of U.S. oil analysts at Oil Price Information Service (OPIS), told Newsweek.

The issue is global, said Kloza, adding that diesel inventories around the world are the lowest as they’ve been since 1982, “and we’ve added about 3.4 billion people in that time.”

Read that last line again.

The total population of the planet has nearly doubled since the early 1980s, and so we truly are in unprecedented territory.

Like I said earlier, I have never seen global supplies of diesel fuel any tighter than they are at this moment.

Of course that doesn’t mean that we are about to totally run out of diesel fuel.

But as supplies get tighter, we are likely to increasingly witness temporary shortages that have the potential to cause immense supply chain headaches…

A shortage of diesel fuel is spreading across the United States, with one company launching an emergency delivery protocol, requesting a 72-hour advance notice from clients to be able to make the delivery.

Per a Bloomberg report, fuel supplier Mansfield Energy wrote in a note to its clients that “conditions are rapidly devolving” and “At times, carriers are having to visit multiple terminals to find supply, which delays deliveries and strains local trucking capacity.”

In a desperate attempt to alleviate the pressure, two tankers that were loaded with diesel and jet fuel that were headed to Europe have been turned back around…

Meanwhile, the scarcity of diesel has prompted traders to start diverting cargoes with the fuel that were originally bound for Europe, Reuters reported earlier this month.

Tanker tracking data showed that at least two tankers with some 90,000 tons of diesel and jet fuel that were initially bound for Europe were diverted toward the U.S. East Coast.

That may help us a bit, but it is not good news at all for the Europeans.

In fact, some areas of Europe have already started to experience very serious shortages of diesel fuel.

Unfortunately, things are not likely to improve much any time soon.

In recent years, politicians in the United States and Europe have made life really difficult for refiners.

As a result, the number of refineries has actually been shrinking, and nobody has really wanted to build any new ones.

Now we get to experience the consequences of their very foolish policies.

At this point, we are being told that the only way to reduce demand for diesel is to have a “significant slowdown in freight movements and manufacturing activity”…

Stabilizing then rebuilding inventories to more comfortable levels will require a significant slowdown in freight movements and manufacturing activity.

There are early indications manufacturing and freight activity peaked in the third quarter of 2022. If confirmed that would take some of the pressure of distillate inventories.

But a deeper and more prolonged slowdown in the United States and/or in Europe and Asia will be needed to boost inventories significantly.

Rebalancing diesel supply will likely require a further rise in interest rates and tighter financial conditions in the United States and other major economies to reduce fuel consumption to more sustainable levels.

In other words, it is going to take a recession and/or a depression in order to fix this crisis.

Ouch.

We should have never allowed things to get this bad.

Over the past decade, we should have been building a lot more refining capacity.

But our politicians didn’t want that, and so now we all get to pay the price.

And thanks to the war in Ukraine, supplies from Russia that could help alleviate this nightmare are not going to be available.

So there will be shortages.

Also, it is likely that diesel prices will go a lot higher than they are right now.

Needless to say, that is going to add even more fuel to our ongoing inflation crisis, because just about everything that we buy has to be transported.

This is yet another reason why our standard of living is going to continue to go down at a frightening pace in the months ahead.

We truly have got a colossal mess on our hands, and it is going to be with us for quite some time to come.

We now have LESS than one day of enough diesel to fuel all the trucks on the road. We are at the lowest inventory since the Spring of 2008...and this time of year, its a bigger worry. Liquid Natural Gas Prices are up TWELVE PERCENT today!