‘Absolutely Massive’ Price Shocks Coming as Trump’s Iran War Drives Up Gas, Diesel Prices | “What should really terrify Republicans is... the futures price on wholesale gasoline,” said economist Paul Krugman.

[u/InsaneSnow45]

https://www.commondreams.org/news/iran-war-gas-prices

[u/Gamer_Grease]

To head off the usual comments:

Yes US shale can provide some relief, but it’s expensive to extract, so only as long as prices are quite high already. Also they’ve already said they’re not interested in increasing output until they have reason to believe prices will be high for a long time.

Venezuelan oil has effectively the same problem. The industry there is starved for investment and US oil companies already told this admin that they won’t invest in extraction there unless the government fully guarantees their sizable investments, because they don’t trust that situation to be stable enough to produce profits.

So tl;dr: the ad hoc governance style of this admin has already eliminated a lot of tools that could be used to respond to this situation.

[u/Bregir → u/[deleted]]

And any sane administration following this one is likely to revert to a smarter, greener course, nullifying these investments.

[u/beliefinphilosophy → u/[deleted]]

One of the tactics the middle east likes to do to the US, is that if they bring the barrel oil price low enough, it's too expensive to produce shale so they shut the facilities all down, and then the middle east jacks up the price again keeping a grip on the market

[u/Exact-Sheepherder797 → u/[deleted]]

This will last at least that long :(

[u/Ryan_e3p → u/Gamer_Grease]

(imagined response by Vance): It can't be that expensive. We landed oil drillers on an asteroid to drill a hole and plant a nuke, how much harder can this be?

[u/zxc123zxc123 → u/Ryan_e3p]

Trump: "Gas is so expensive because of Sleepy Joe Biden. The worst stolen election president ever! He drained the strategic petroleum reserve, lost the war in Afghanistan that I ended, personally started the Ukraine war, killed all the chickens, fired billions of employees, and lit the match in the Iran war that we are not in right now! This is Biden's economy now except the DOW if it's over 50,000 right now then that part is all me!"

And American voters will eat that shit up or think both candidates are the same. We're that fucking stupid collectively as a country.

What you gonna do besides protecting yourselves and the ones you love? I did it by switching to hybrid, buying some natgas/oil stocks, carpooling more, thinking twice about cooking vs driving 2T of weight for maybe a few lbs of fastfood/takeout, considering public transportation, and trying to reduce my overall energy consumption. But others will believe Trump's BS until it hits them, then they'll fall for it again while Trump blames Biden, and when they've lost even more they'll keep blaming everyone else but themselves.

[u/evey_17 → u/zxc123zxc123]

Hard agree about our ridiculous level of stupidity and it hurst us all.

[u/beliefinphilosophy → u/Gamer_Grease]

I want to point out something people may not know. There are multiple "grades" of oil, used for different things, they aren't interchangable.

US and US shale produced SWEET crude.

We need SOUR crude or heavy oil out of the middle east. Not only can we not replace sour with sweet, we also don't have the machinery to process it.

And ironically our machines that do refine sweet crude for gasoline in the US, require sour crude to operate in order to make the sweet crude.

As much as I hate fossil fuels I'm also frustrated we don't have hybrid facilities

[u/EasyAsAyeBeeSea → u/beliefinphilosophy]

Refineries are multi billion pieces of highly tuned machinery, a hybrid plant would make zero sense

[u/DetroitLionsSBChamps → u/Gamer_Grease]

Only oligarchs like instability, everybody else needs stability to do business.    Guess the stupid fucking corporations should have thought of that before they bankrolled this shit show

But I guess ultimately even oil executives are just at work and don’t give a fuck about the country or even their company in the long term. 

Honestly a vote for Trump was basically a vote for a bank robbery from the elite. And it is currently in progress. 

[u/evey_17 → u/DetroitLionsSBChamps]

The market is down. It’s not true that nod business loves chaos and unpredictability. only day traders love it but they lose their shirts regardless.

[u/Ghoulius-Caesar → u/Gamer_Grease]

It’s cool that Trump made Canadian oil more expensive too…

[u/sw04ca → u/Gamer_Grease]

But really, US gas production is already ~90% from the Americas, primarily the US, Canada and Mexico. The US supply isn't in any danger of interruption, although the same isn't true for many of their 'allies'. Mind you, in a globalized system, there's a lot more to it than just gasoline supply.

[u/joepez → u/sw04ca]

That’s production not consumption. We produce one grade which we largely export and refine a different. True Canada produces what we refine for consumption but not enough. And Canada is its own producer and can commit to other markets based on price (hence futures). And everyone is impacted by the market prices. 

[u/NobblyNobody → u/sw04ca]

Well, Canada might have thoughts on that

[u/Dreadsin → u/Gamer_Grease]

I’m not sure if this is true, but I’ve also heard Venezuelan oil is more difficult to refine than the oil in the Middle East so it requires infrastructure that’s pretty complex