Posted on 10/04/2026 6:11:58 AM PDT by MtnClimber
So here we are, with diesel at $6 a gallon.
Listening to the political conversation, you could easily come away thinking this all started when Iran went to war. In fact, it didn’t. Iran supplied the shock, but we had already built the vulnerability, which is a key distinction.
Yes, the war in the Middle East has disrupted oil flows and tightened global supplies. The Energy Information Administration says that tight global distillate supplies and elevated crude prices are pushing diesel prices higher. U.S. distillate inventories have fallen below their five-year range, while the loss of significant refining and petroleum-product supplies worldwide has tightened the market.
However, while that explains why diesel prices are so high right now, it doesn’t explain how we became so vulnerable to price shocks.
The reality is that America still produces enormous quantities of crude oil. The trouble is that crude oil is not diesel. Before it reaches the tank of the truck delivering your groceries, somebody has to transport it, refine it, and distribute it—and that brings us to the question nobody seems especially interested in asking:
What happened to the refineries?
The newest major U.S. refinery came online in 1977.
There is a technical footnote here. A 45,000-barrel-per-day refinery in Galveston began operating in 2022. Forty-five thousand barrels a day. In the world of American refining, that is practically a microbrewery.
The newest refinery with significant downstream capacity, then, is Marathon’s Garyville, Louisiana, refinery, which began operating in 1977. It has since been expanded to roughly 617,000 barrels per day.
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
“””About the Author
Luis Gonzalez
Luis Gonzalez is the owner and publisher of The Last Wire, an independent blog covering news, politics, opinion, and the rabbit holes beneath the headlines. His work has also appeared in the American Thinker. He has been writing online since 2000 and is the founder of Boiling Frogs, a personal blog launched in 2008. A retired food service professional, Gonzalez spent more than 40 years on both the operator and supply sides of the industry. He hangs his hat at The Briefing Room, where he excels at the role of resident curmudgeon.”””
I only see that Luis is qualified to comment on how long to cook carrots.
Mismanagement? No. Closures — due to Democrat environmental extremism and Republican fear of opposing it.
4x365x3000 = 4,380,000
4,380,000/(2000x423) ~= 5.18 gallons
($6.20x4,380,000)/(2000x423) ~= $32.10
($6.20x4,380,000x6)/(2000x423x16) ~= $12.04
Blame the greenies who cannot abide any industrial progress.
DO NOT OUT THE “AQMB”
AIR QUALITY MANAGEMENT BOARD IN CALIF.
If the Ukrainian Armed Forces are responsible for 60% of the increase, how much would Trump and Bibi be responsible for?
($6.20x4,380,000x6x4)/(2000x423x16x10) ~= $4.82 over 365 days
Trump and Bibi might be costing Mr. Oenophile about two cents a day.
The mismanagement is like the diesel worldwide market.
Russians and Uke’s are using a lot of fuel, Venezuela is a poop show and California shut down two refineries.
Supply is low, so the price goes up.
I prefer the term defective regulation over the term mismanagement.
Not just CaCaLand, all of the West coast guv’nas have shut down refineries. What the arseholes did not note was that there are limited pipelines running parallel to the coast. Not enough to supply any oil fuel — even if CaCaLand was willing to ship it to them.
All have sold their souls to the CCP for imported oil — Iranian oil laundered thru West pacific ocean countries. But, Iran is not shipping oil to the CCP any longer, so all prices are spiking all along the coast.
Just like the EU when they went to a proxy war with Russia — just after making themselves dependent on Russian oil production and distribution.
I got so thoroughly sick of watching utility execs and boards suck up to the green lobby that I couldn’t take it any more. I knew they would not change, so I got out of the industry. For decades I thought I was in a great industry providing a vital product (electricity) that everybody needed and was bettering the country. I finally woke up to the reality that they would NEVER push back on the forces set out to destroy them. Just like the moslem invasion — politicians in western countries will not push back against those bent on destroying us.
Which was why diesel was always cheaper than gas. Then along came ultra low sulfur diesel, which has to be refined even further, similar to the regional specialty blends of gasoline to prevent smog.
Refineries have to switch processes, which means stop making sone products to produce the other products, couple that with reduced refinery capacity and that brings us to where we are at today.
“Russians and Uke’s are using a lot of fuel”
The Russian army has barely budged. It needs little fuel.
The Ukrainian attacks simply reduce Russian foreign exchange earnings.
If the Ukrainians hit the Russians hard enough, consumer goods imports from China might have to be stopped.
Wildberries is probably going to just in time inventory management of reduced product lines.
Ukrainian attacks on Wildberries warehouses might have saved Putin the trouble of having to issue consumer goods import restrictions for a time.
Russians don’t live awaiting orders from Amazon Prime. They generally live in tiny apartments with little space for Chinese-made stuff.
Winter is coming soon to Russia. Cars are no match for several feet of Russian snow.
The more fuel-efficient railroads have a substantial ability to take loads back from the trucking industry:
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/RAILFRTCARLOADSD11
“I guess that makes those who call themselves Conservatives, actually Democrat Enablers, then.”
When you put it that way, yes, the so called Pricipled Conservatives would rather sit home and not vote than vote for a half way conservative. My thoughts are, a half way Republican is better than any Democrat. But I know people will argue about that. I’ve been dressed down many times here on FR because we were left with people like Mitt Romney, John McCain, Bob Dole, etc. Who do you vote for when that is all there is left?
You can call is mismanagement if you wish, but refinery capex has always been tied to the price of oil. Cheap oil = no money for investment other than annual turnarounds where vital repairs are made. It’s always been this way, just ask anyone who sells capital equipment to the refining market.
Did you notice that EIA discontinued the Weekly Status Report? If anyone has found the location of the current supply in storage bands covering the 5 year range please let me know where it is. They put the range bands in the bottom of the front page but nothing for Jet, Diesel, Gasoline, Propane etc.
The Weekly status report was too convenient to show just how bad our storage is, so they discontinued it. After decades of this very good and convenient report being available they stopped it.
The Weekly Petroleum Full Report PDF has been discontinued effective
September 23, 2026. For current Weekly Petroleum Status Report
information, please visit https://www.eia.gov/petroleum/supply/weekly/
They did finally close down refineries I. California but I think they still sell gasoline there. II am not sure how much that affects the price nation wide, but I bet it has some
I agree. we should be using railroads for long haul transport and then use the trucks for local distribution.
“but I bet it has some”
Yes. Refineries elsewhere picked up the slack but they had little spare capacity to make up the shortfall. US refineries are running at record high utilization rates. That means there is reduced ability to handle a refinery getting knocked out by accident or being forced to lower output levels. Not to mention minimal spare capacity to handle scheduled maintenance.
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