How much oil-market buffer is left?
depletion.org98 points by mcone 15 hours ago
98 points by mcone 15 hours ago
Can anyone speak to the long term impacts of this? Like is gas going to remain high for years (or even worse get rationed) and I should trade in for an EV now?
Iran has continued to fire at tankers exiting the Strait of Hormuz under U.S. Navy escort, and apparently the U.S. can't afford to do anything about it.
The Bab el-Mandeb Strait, which is an alternative route used by the Saudis, is being closed by the Houthis. The Houthis are a close partner of Iran.
And the East-West pipeline, which was another alternative route owned by the Saudis, was blown up. They went for the pumping stations, so repairing it will take at least a month, and there is no way to repair it without it possibly being hit again anyway.
The oil infrastructure attacks by Ukraine are mainly targeting refineries, which would normally lower oil prices, since crude oil is an input to these refineries. These attacks are increasing diesel prices, though.
Iran is trying to break the world economy so the US packs up and leaves. Israel wants to keep the US there because the US is fighting one of their strongest enemies. Because Israel "is the US's greatest ally" (as many politicians have proclaimed over the years), they have a lot of sway as to what the US does. Not to mention, they seem to do whatever they can to derail any peace process.
Iran knows this, and therefore wants to make sure the US experiences enough pain to never come back and try to fight them again.
So, until the US is willing to stop, which rests heavily on when Israel is willing to stop, oil prices will remain high. (Or Iran folds, which they aren't going to do, they've been preparing for years and have seen how the US treated Venezuela - they stole all their oil, and left the regime intact)
Also, we've seen nothing yet, as the soft storage (the amount of oil that's normally floating through rhe global network) and the SPR's are all running dry. I would guess $150 oil in about a month.
This is the might our 20 trillion dollars spent on military has bought us.
A month or two ago they sent out an email asking common military members for ideas to deal with Iran. We've paid think tanks millions of dollars for plans like that. Guess they weren't worth anything in practice though.
All that money spent on plans and equipment and it sustains--what?--like 3 weeks of bombing Iranian children? (I mean, we did bomb a children's school on the first day, and nobody has been held accountable, so I'm still bitter about that. Let's be better please.)
The US has a lot of military hardware but questionable leadership just now. At least they've brought in testosterone tests so the military should look the part.
This can't be real?
It was widely reported starting around August 3, 2026. I just Googled it.
https://www.cnn.com/2026/08/03/politics/us-military-iran-war...
> Let's be better please.
That rhetorical horse left the allegorical barn a long time ago.
> and there is no way to repair it without it possibly being hit again anyway.
What if they deploy hordes of those cheap Ukrainian anti-drone interceptors, near each station?
Nice summary.
What I find interesting is that while the actions of the US have been incredibly foolish and poorly thought through, Iran’s ability to make things hurt is very much a sword that cuts both ways.
There is now very strong incentive to develop alternatives that bypass what Iran can effect, which is exactly what’s happening. It will take a while for the infrastructure to come online, but as the months and eventually years go by, Iran will find its biggest lever for control rapidly diminishing even if the war was stopped now. Likewise, the move to EV’s will likely accelerate.
Americans have proven passive enough that I don’t expect political/military change unless the democrats pull their head out of their ass long enough to win the 2026 November elections and start impeaching and prosecuting the trump regime.
"There is now very strong incentive to develop alternatives that bypass what Iran can effect, which is exactly what’s happening. It will take a while for the infrastructure to come online, but as the months and eventually years go by, Iran will find its biggest lever for control rapidly diminishing even if the war was stopped now. Likewise, the move to EV’s will likely accelerate."
I am old enough to have lived through the oil shocks in New Zealand. It got so bad the government rolled out an alternative fuel system network of compressed natural gas. Many fuel stations had installed the tanks and pumps and many cars were converted to it. NZ has gas deposits enough to meet all its own demands.
As soon as the oil shock was over it was all ripped out and we all went back to oil.
It will take _many_ years for alternatives to come online in the US and most other places. So much of the west is unable to execute on any kind of large project. In addition, in the US, the current administration has an irrational opposition to the main cost-effective alternatives.
It doesn’t seem irrational if their friends/family/donors have investments in the incumbent energy systems.
What if I told you that manipulating the oil futures market was a foolproof way to make themselves filthy rich? Would you still think that opposition was irrational?
> ...unless the democrats ... start impeaching and prosecuting the trump regime.
Because that worked so well last time.
Time for some new ideas.
The world moving away from oil weakens America too. It's not like the US is a leading producer of solar panels or EVs.
Depends whether you expect this conflict to continue.
If these are the opening salvos of WW3 or even just a protracted regional Mideast war, yes you should get the EV. Experience in WW2 was that it became impossible to get petrol & diesel at any price. Supply lines would often be disrupted, and what petroleum products were available were usually allocated to the military.
If tensions die down after the midterms and eventually a peace accord or even stalemate is reached, you're looking at about 2-3 years of current prices. It'll take time to rebuild production in most Middle Eastern countries, many of which have had large oilfields, pipelines, and tanker loading facilities destroyed. You'll have to run the financials yourself of how much an EV costs, how much life you have left in your existing vehicle, and what local gas and electricity costs are, but I believe most EVs don't pencil out economically if it's just 2-3 years of current gas prices.
A third option is that everybody else (notably China and India) switches to EVs. If this happens gas will go down in price through reduced competition for it, and so you may be able to enjoy cheap gas for the remainder of your vehicle's lifetime. But note that in this scenario, you probably want to switch to an EV yourself, as eventually parts, repairs, and infrastructure for gas cars will become impossible to find.
Note that it is now outside of the control of the POTUS or U.S. military whether this conflict continues. They can prolong it, but they can't stop it. Recent aggression has been driven by Iran and its proxies, who are demonstrating that there is nothing the U.S. can do about it.
Well the US could put boots on the ground, launch nukes, do any number of crazy things. And sadly with the current administration it seems everything is on the table.
They don't really fix the problem, though. Problem is a lack of commercial activity in the region because people don't want to die. Turning the place into a literal warzone (again), launching nukes, or other crazy things does not instill confidence that you won't die sailing there.
This is one of those cases where the only winning move is not to play, and both belligerents have proven stupendously bad at not playing.
An e-cargo bike is a good/cheaper/additional option if your situation allows it
Fun fact oil tankers only go about 12mph, so it takes months for it to cross, the same time it would take to bike the route(if you could)
Oil tankers travel 24/7, so 12mph is nearly 300 miles a day. You won’t do that on a bike for two weeks straight.
This years RAAM (Race Across America) winner finished in 8 days 19 hours, that's almost 350 miles per day.
Normal people no, but top ultra endurance cyclists can do 300 miles a day for two weeks straight. Especially if they are not self-supported and/or the course is not too hilly.
They don't go at that speed the whole time. They do that journey in just short of two months
Get the EV. They're better anyway.
PHEV are more convenient and generally better. A Toyota Rav4 PHEV, Prius or may others, are shockingly fuel efficient relagtive to older car stock. I had not replaced a car for 16 years and found getting actual 52-54mpg out of a much larger and heavier vehicle genuinely shocking.
Most people have a relatively short commute where the modest range of PHEV still allows them to mostly be on electric.
I can’t imagine buying a car that needs to go to the gas station to refill at this point, now that we have ev’s.
This total cost of ownership calculator can be helpful:
Compared to a bmw i3, it’s price and (anecdotal) reliability are kind of comparable, but the annual cost is >2x more, and the carbon footprint is >4x.
(I had to pick a slightly older i3 to compare, since it’s discontinued).
As you point out, the rav4 is bigger. A lightning truck is bigger than the rav4 hybrid, but with lower purchase cost (2023, base for both). The lightning has higher per year costs though.
It’s pretty clearly game over for ICE/hybrids. Tariffs and bribed politicians can’t change the underlying price and performance advantage.
In Connecticut it is only now cheaper to use electric instead of gas in my prius prime. I get 50-53 mpg highway, even over very long distances I drive to family in STL a few times a years, and electric is $0.33/kWh. So even at around 4 miles/kWh I'm paying $0.0825/mile for electric which breaks even right around $4.25/gallon. So it's really going to depend upon where you live.
That's not to say I wouldn't buy an electric car tomorrow if I had the option. My somewhat frequent long drives make gas slightly preferable but these days I'd much prefer electric.
Yes they’re better. But it’s very expensive to get the EV I want that would replace my current cars capabilities.
Polestar was kicked out from the US market and is now practically giving away their vehicles. Look at their lease deals.
I'm curious what specific capabilities you're referring to here.
I have an outback with AT tires and I can fit my surfboards inside. I don’t want a compact. Rivian R2 is tempting but esspensive.
I replaced my old Forester with the new Trailseeker. Stsrting price (and interest rate) is much better than the R2.
I can slide in an 8’ board no problem when I’m too lazy to use the roof rack.
I haven’t upgraded the wheels or tires yet but the stock ones have had no problem going up and down the old logging and forest service roads of NW Oregon and SW Washington.
If the Toyota sienna had a plugin ev option that would be really compelling for me. The electric van market is surprisingly sad. I currently only boogie board because it fits in my car.
I’m really tempted by current sienna hybrids, my current gas one gets 20mpg on a good day. Plug-in for the daily school commutes and after school activities would be great
The r2 is right on the median price for new cars in the US, believe it or not. Crazy. But yeah, an Outback is still cheaper
Subaru dealers near me have the Trailseeker, an EV comparable to the Outback, listed around $35k
Ooo nice I wrote Subie off after the Solerra flop but I’ll take a look
The Solterra got a lot better in the 2026 model year. It’s not a bottom-tier EV anymore. (Disclosure: I have one)
Used Tesla Model Y with AT tires? You can get a small lift kit for them if you want more ground clearance.
If you can install a charger at home, get a plug in hybrid at a minimum (if you can afford it). The concept is old enough to support a used market but still pricey.
My mom won't get rid of her 2014 Leaf and won't go back to gas after a recent electric VW pickup. It's the only way to go (if you can afford it).
The main point of news I heard was that the Iran infrastructure the US destroyed, in a time where they are allowed to repair it and not just get bombed again, will take three years to repair. Oil prices don't get "cheap" again this side of 2030. Not to mention that there is a bunch of Russian infrastructure that is still on the chopping block to be destroyed by Ukraine as that war continues. Which has the same time it takes to rebuild issues.
Iran infrastructure is a non-issue, they have been heavily sanctioned for years. The issue with Iran is they are stopping everybody else in the region from exporting oil.
There is a global market for energy, a country X that would have bought from Iran but couldn't because of refinery damage has to buy it from someone else, pushing up the price at the margin for everyone.
While they have been under heavy sanctions, they have largely gotten around this, for example by trading with China (who have just said they will not abide by our "unilateral sanctions"). So their oil has still been going to service global needs, and its lack will still have an effect (as will the missing Russian oil products).
Oddly, since the Iranians (and Russians) have been selling their oil products at a discount, they were actually having the effect of holding down the price of petroleum prior to the war. No idea about how much in real terms, but...
I wouldn't say largely, but yes the sanctions were never absolute. Enough to make Iran alone not a big issue.
Iran was still selling oil to China and others. Those now have to buy somewhere else, so it does affect our prices.
That's the main issue, yes. But where was all that oil Iran was producing going before their infrastructure was destroyed? Are you claiming they only ever used it domestically and didn't export any of it? That seems unlikely.
Iran still exported, and the nations that bought will now buy where we buy as well.
Is that the timeline in general for any repairs in the region? 3 years?
When people have an incentive to build that fast and cut corners (which they will). Under normal circumstances dotting the i's and crossing they t's, it's 5 to 7 years. Remember, the US is temporarily running low on missiles because of how much explosives Trump dropped on Iran. They blew up a petrostate level of petroleum infrastructure to the tune of $58B in damages of specialized engineering, about 15% of the country's total GDP. If recreating that in a quarter was possible, everyone with a drop of oil under their toes would do it.
And it's not just Iran now: Saudi pipelines and facilities are being hit too.
The longer this stupid war continues, the worse off everyone will get (well, except oil executives and shareholders, I guess).
> well, except oil executives and shareholders, I guess
They should be sued by governments, they can only make more money if they artificially increase their margin, if they simply passed the cost down to the consumers they shouldn't have record profits
Even if they didn't react to the natural demand/offer dynamic, American refineries are processing 30-40% more volume than before; that means US oil companies are making money that someone else was making before.
Russian infrastructure isn't affecting oil prices.
The Russians are losing refineries, not oil fields.
The Russian crude trade to countries like India pushes the price down globally, but limits Russian access to refined fuels and products.
It also limits their ability to fund the war.
It does. Oil export is down after repeated attacks on ports and export infrastructure both on Black and Baltic sea and attacks on tankers in Black (and even Mediterranean) sea. Russia exports less oil than it extracts and will start shutting down oil wells soon (may be doing this already).
Attacks on refineries also have impact on worlds petrol/diesel prices - one of biggest exporters turned into an importer at a time when there is world shortage of refining capacity and cracks spread is at or near all time high.
> It also limits their ability to fund the war.
It does but it also makes petrol and diesel more expensive around the world.
Russian infrastructure losses are affecting global diesel prices, pushing up the cost of everything.
Russia hasn't been exporting diesel to anyone for a while now, and they're unlikely to resume exports anytime soon.
https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/russia-extends-diese...
Source?
All the petrol processed in the world is consumed virtually on the spot, take down any production capacity anywhere and you'll create all kind of nasty side effects, now take down multiple major actors/transport roads and you get the current situation
That's not a source. And it also directly contradicts your assertion.
Petroleum products are refined and consumed near the point of use because they're not very shelf stable. Petrol is not shipped internationally in any significant quantity, neither is diesel for these reasons.
Take down any production capacity anywhere and you'll have shortages locally but crude oil supplies will divert to other refining capacity and fall in price.
Conversely take down crude oil supply...
Basic supply & demand. Russia has banned the export of gas & diesel, and is buying gas from India.
I mean the EV is a good choice, but the bigger impact here is that everything gets more expensive due to the increase in costs of shipping, refining, producing, and heating/cooling...
Which often aren't as visible as paying $82.00 to fill up your ICE vehicle, but add up to much more of an impact.
Long term impact of Iran war is that they expand UAE-Oman pipelines to bypass Hormuz.
This doesn't work as long as hostilities continue, since as we've seen so far, pipelines are extremely vulnerable to drone and cruise missile attack.
And/or ramp up production in other countries not dependent on the strait. One way or the other the market will eventually react to stabilize prices, it just takes a while (years) for the infrastructure necessary to do that to be built.
This situation reminds me of when I quit cigarettes because I got really sick, and then after a few months of recovery, I asked myself "Do I really want to start smoking again?"
No, I did not, so I did not.
I don't think we are going cold turkey, but Trump probably couldn't have given the green movement a better gift.
There has been a tendency for each of the last 4 presidents to do the opposite of their campaign slogans. GW Bush was "Compassionate conservatism" in 2000, and then he started 2 wars and radically expanded both the federal budget deficit and the federal government. In 2004 it was "A safer world and a more hopeful America", and look where we are now. Obama's 2008 slogans included "Change", "Hope", and "Yes we can", and then we got more of the same, proving that no we couldn't. His 2012 slogan was "Middle class first", and then 2012-2016 featured the evisceration of the middle class. Biden's 2020 slogans were "Build back better", "Restore the soul of the nation", and "Our best days still lie ahead", and none of those seem particularly descriptive of what actually happened 6 years later (though I'll grant that the Biden presidency was a normalcy reprieve after COVID and Jan 6).
Donald Trump's slogans were "Make America Great Again" and "Drill baby drill", and so of course he's been destroying America and kickstarting the green revolution through high oil prices.
It would be ironic if after decades of leaders talking climate crisis but not doing anything that caused global fossil fuel use to stop rising, president "Global Warming Scam" ends up getting it to fall through military incompetence.
And Iran can’t hit those? What’s the timeline to build?
Iran can hit any pipeline on the peninsula if they have an accurate enough weapon (or get lucky) and it's not shot down. Their weapon ranges covers the entire Arabian Peninsula.
No. That would require knowing the future.
Trump supporters will tell you not to worry as he has a deal that almost done and oil will once again be cheap soon. (I didn't look up what he is saying, but he typically says things like that).
There are a number of pessimists that will tell you that things will never get better. Or maybe they get better for a short time but peak oil is here and things will get worse again soon.
My guess: Iran has every incentive to keep oil prices high in the US until after the election in November as the Democrats are yelling that much of high gas prices are caused by Trump attacking Iran; the higher fuel prices are the more likely it is Trump supporters in Congress lose their reelection bid and in turn hurt Trump. However I can't predict what happens after this - there are a lot of different force in the world (Both Iran and other countries) that are hurting and nobody know who will "blink" or "do something"; much less what what actions will be taken as a result.
If you can charge at home then trading in for an EV makes sense. Electric at home is vastly cheaper than fuel. If you can't charge at home, electric prices are all over, generally cheaper, but often not by enough to be worth the bother.
Better yet, demand your town put in good public transit. Good transit is expensive in the short run, but a good network means almost everybody in the city sells one car (most people live in a family situation with multiple cars so selling leaves one for whatever their objection is).
I think the future of gas prices looks ... interesting. In the short term we have the war jacking the price up, but in the medium term the increasing popularity of EVs pushes down demand and along with it prices. For a time. Until we start permanently turning off capacity, at which point prices start going back up again. I'm obviously no expert, but I envision the process of going ICE->EV being a series of waves, ebb & flow, as fuel prices react.
Unlike wars, EV adoption is a slow, steady, relatively predictable process. I don't think it'll have a very noticeable impact on gas prices the way short term crisis tend to.
The much more noticeable factor will be reducing how many people even care about gas prices in the first place.
>If you can charge at home then trading in for an EV makes sense. Electric at home is vastly cheaper than fuel. If you can't charge at home, electric prices are all over, generally cheaper, but often not by enough to be worth the bother.
Sadly, in CA, charging at home (minimum $0.26/kWh) isn't that much cheaper. Sure, maybe half the price of fueling up an efficient gas car, but not like 5x cheaper or anything..
> Sadly, in CA, charging at home (minimum $0.26/kWh) isn't that much cheaper.
Just get some solar panels. We live on a sailboat and charge the electric outboard of our dinghy (kind of our "car", this is what we use to go to stores etc) with the surplus on sunny days.
Solar panels are ridiculously cheap now.
I do have SUV ( Pathfinder ) for camping, skiing, kayaking, and other long trips. And 2 seats electric Smart for local commute - groceries, school drop off/pickup, gym visits etc. This is 95% of my family car use. The 90 miles charge is about $2, I do it 2 times a week. Yes, this is CA
I looked into this because that depletion.org site makes the situation look scary as hell at first glance, and I think the honest answer is basically: *yes, this is a legitimate problem, but no, I wouldn't read it as "gas is about to be rationed and stay insanely expensive for years."*
First, the site isn't bullshit. The underlying inventory problem it's tracking is very real. The IEA's September 11 report says global observed oil inventories have fallen *507 million barrels since February*, more than *10 million barrels/day of Gulf production was still shut in* during August, and global refinery throughput was 4.2 million b/d lower than a year earlier. That's pretty freaking ugly.
However, there is a pretty important distinction between the site's data and the scary probability numbers it puts on the scenarios. The site itself says the probabilities are assigned using judgment, and it specifically warns that the model "wasn't developed by an energy analyst." So I'd regard it as a really useful stress dashboard and not interpret "50% corridor lapse" as if the IEA just announced a 50% probability of catastrophe.
What I found more concerning is that some actual energy experts are now describing basically the same physical problem, just without going nearly as far on the probabilities.
Columbia's Center on Global Energy Policy put out a discussion today estimating the world is currently short roughly *5 million barrels/day* of crude and petroleum products relative to demand. Their point was that the reason this didn't immediately turn into an enormous price spike months ago is because we had buffers everywhere - excess oil, oil sitting on tankers, strategic reserve releases, spare refinery capacity in some places, etc. We're now burning through those buffers. At some point price has to do the work.
And I think "price has to do the work" is the key distinction here.
When economists talk about *rationing through price*, they don't mean somebody is handing you a little card allowing you eight gallons of gas this week. They mean gasoline goes to $5, $6, whatever it takes until enough people decide not to take the road trip, companies consolidate deliveries, airlines cut marginal routes, factories use less diesel, weaker economies consume less, etc.
That's much more likely than literal nationwide American gasoline rationing.
The other thing that surprised me is that *diesel and refined products actually look scarier than gasoline*. This isn't just a shortage of crude. Gulf refining capacity is also disrupted, Russian products are constrained, and refinery margins have gone nuts. So you can theoretically have crude available somewhere on Earth and still have a shortage of the exact petroleum product somebody needs in the exact place they need it. The IEA specifically says the global refining system is stretched extremely tight.
That said, the EIA is still nowhere close to forecasting "welcome to Mad Max."
Their September 9 forecast has Brent averaging *$74/barrel in 2027* and U.S. regular gasoline averaging *$3.35/gallon*, with Middle Eastern production gradually recovering and getting back near pre-conflict levels around Q2 2027.
There is a catch there, though. Their forecast was actually completed September 3, so some of the latest deterioration isn't in it. That's probably why I wouldn't just shrug and say the whole thing is temporary either. The newer IEA report is substantially uglier. Still, even the IEA forecasts an enormous *8 million b/d rebound in global production in 2027*.
So if you're literally asking:
> should I trade my car in for an EV because I might not be able to buy gasoline?
I wouldn't.
If you were already going to replace the car anyway, though, I think this absolutely moves the needle towards an EV, especially if you can charge at home.
You're basically buying yourself some insurance against this entire category of bullshit. Strait gets closed? Iran attacks tankers? Saudi pipeline gets blown up? Russia stops exporting diesel? Oil hits $150? You care considerably less.
Wood Mackenzie actually published something on September 11 making essentially that broader argument - that persistent oil-price volatility could accelerate EV adoption because the advantage isn't merely a lower average fuel cost. You're also removing most of your exposure to oil-market shocks.
But if you've already got a perfectly good paid-off gasoline car, dumping it and buying a brand-new $40,000 EV solely because you're scared gasoline will be rationed seems like exactly the kind of panic trade where you somehow manage to lose more money avoiding the crisis than the crisis would have cost you.
Basically, my read is:
*Expensive and unusually volatile gasoline for a while? Very plausible.*
*Diesel/refined-product shortages getting seriously nasty? More plausible than I realized.*
*Localized shortages if things get worse? Definitely possible.*
*America running gasoline ration books for years? I couldn't find any serious institution treating that as the expected outcome.*
The part of this I'd actually keep watching isn't even the price of oil by itself. It's whether Hormuz tanker traffic recovers, whether the Saudi bypass pipeline comes back, whether Gulf production starts returning, and most importantly whether inventories finally stop falling.
If those things start improving, this probably looks like a brutal but temporary energy shock.
If another few months go by and we're still draining hundreds of millions of barrels out of inventories while the physical routes remain screwed up, then I think the depletion.org people start looking considerably less alarmist.
This is so appallingly LLM-generated it almost could read as satire. Is there some functionality here to report AI generated comments?
It's like a catalogue of US misadventures and ego.
I like that no one is immediately jumping on this website for being AI generated.
Of course most of it is, but it looks like the author put some care into this. It doesn't seem like a one off slop from Astra or anything.
Actually my favorite part is on the very bottom. The author attributes Qwen running on his local computer.
"Built with help from a local AI (Qwen 3.8-27b) running on an HP Omen 30L (RTX 3090) in my office."
I too noticed this and liked it..
This feels more like an "e-bike for the mind" and less of a chauffeur.
Happy we made the switch to all EVs + solar this year. Knock on effects on the economy are going to be brutal though.
Off-topic: what a well designed infographics. Clean, easy to read, great layout. A very good job!
The amount of times "global commodity" was explained in this comment section was interesting.
The real question is how quickly demand can be destroyed.
I'd rather we ask how quickly demand can be transferred to other energy sources, like electricity.
Electricity is not a source though. Do you mean solar, nuclear, and such? The demand is already there. It's the supply that is the issue.
> The demand is already there. It's the supply that is the issue.
Somehow many societies are able to power a huge amount of transportation via electrified rail and bus systems. That's an existing solution that requires zero new technology.
And of course there are EVs for places that somehow can't figure out how to do electrified mass transit.
Wrong. Storage is the issue. In my town in switzerland we produce a surplus of solar energy, so much that we can't even sell it back to the electricity company.
But the storage is too limited. The surplus during the summer doesn't translate to the winter months so other types of electricity generation is still required.
> Wrong. Storage is the issue
And what's great about EVs is that they are also storage. In winter you can buy electricity from places that do have solar potential - it's not far from Switzerland.
That is still demand destruction: under supply of a resource triggers substitution activity which means the demand for that specific good never returns after.
I am hesitant to ask, and yet morbidly curious what you are gesturing at.
Simple not morbid at all example is me buying an EV instead of a gas car and leaving the heat at 68 instead of 70 this winter. That destroys some demand for oil.
I'm guessing China? China has shown the world that it can tolerate the shock, and it was even a huge boon for them as they are successfully exporting excess EV production. World demand is significant, China alone was expected to increase world oil demand to a breaking point, and that isn't happening, and in fact, China is exporting oil demand destruction.
China has almost certainly been dramatically drawing down their oil reserves. They don’t publish trustworthy numbers on it like western countries do, but their import rates dropped too fast for any other explanation.
That’s not to say they haven’t done a phenomenal job with demand destruction it’s just their own domestic usage is still very high and they have to import unlike other heavy users.
> That’s not to say they haven’t done a phenomenal job with demand destruction it’s just their own domestic usage is still very high and they have to import unlike other heavy users.
They will, just not as much as everyone was predicting a two decades ago. The fact that China isn't really feeling any pressure at all here should be a wake up call (they depend on oil, just less and less as time goes on). It isn't just that though, they basically took Nepal off oil completely, a bit of a special case since they had to import via India, which was always really expensive (and Nepal has lots of hydro). And the rest of the third world which simply can't afford much oil anyways now has a convenient other option.
Likewise, I don't see why ICE lovers are up in arms about people buying EVs. Shouldn't that just mean more oil (and less pricing pressure) for them?
China is the 5th largest oil producer in the world and the 2nd largest consumer. It's not just pulling from reserves that has dropped their consumption: for instance they have been switching very rapidly to electric trucks. At the same time they've been increasing internal production. I'm sure their goal is to balance production and consumption, to electrify enough of their demand that internal production can cover the remaining demand that's more difficult to electrify: jets, tanks, plastic, etc.
Compare the US and China on oil usage. The US is a net exporter compared to China being a huge importer.
And they for _sure_ are pulling from reserves since the US attacked Iran. The volume of imports and usage figures can only be explained that way. The impressive thing is the numbers suggest their reserves were massive and probably bigger than anyone thought.
They are for sure electrifying fast. In many ways the envy of the world on this. But they are oil import dependent and likely going to be more so soon if their reserves draw down too far.
China reducing their oil imports was a huge boon to the entire world. China basically said "look everyone, we're strong, we'll reduce oil imports to help the rest of the world, and that will benefit all of us together, and also we're manufacturing and selling EVs and solar panels".
China is showing the world they have reached the lofty ideal of being a functional society, and I hate that an authoritarian Communist government was how they did it. I don't want to live under such a government, but I can't deny it's looking like a stronger form of government right now.
For the rest of us, if we want democracy to be better than authoritarian Communism, then we actually have to do the "be better" part.
> For the rest of us, if we want democracy to be better than authoritarian Communism, then we actually have to do the "be better" part.
Only problem is that the current reality of authoritarian capitalism in the US isn't helping democracy at all.
EV adoption removes demand for oil as does replacing home heating oil with heat pump etc.
Many uses for oil are based on existing infrastructure, build different infrastructure and demand falls.
Oil prices will increase until enough people stop buying it that the decrease production is canceled out.
"demand destruction" == demand falling [here because of the war]
E.g., recessions, etc. Morbid would be if demand destruction came from deaths of many humans, but GP clearly did not mean that.
We as a planet were approaching Peak Oil consumption and this mishap has just acclerated that slightly. In all likelyhood annual oil consumtion will slowly decline or maybe quickly.
Demand destruction is a specific concept in economics where high prices for something cause a lasting reduction in demand. The other comments explain typical mechanisms for this, like high prices for fossil fuels spurring on electrification of machinery powered by fossil fuels, which then reduces the demand base for fossil fuels. Or the downturn of economies being accelerated by fossil fuel pricing pressure, increasing deindustrialization, and reducing fuel demand (e.g. what europe is experiencing).
Destroying demand is about getting people to not consume the thing. Oil being a knock on everything else and at such a volume would probably starve millions at the very least. This whole thing is a depopulation war. If you're reading this, you're on the losing side.
But for the US, there's no question like that. It produces a lot lot more than it consumes anyway. There can't be a shortage.
Yes US produces mostly light crude and production of refined products requires also inputs of heavy one, but it's not produced in the Middle East anyway, so current situation can't impact that, either.
> But for the US, there's no question like that. It produces a lot lot more than it consumes anyway. There can't be a shortage.
It's a global commodity. The reason there likely won't be a shortage in the U.S. has little to do with our production volumes, and has more to do with the fact that we're rich enough to be able to afford the higher prices when many other countries will have to forgeo using oil.
But if we weren't a rich country and we couldn't afford to pay a higher price for oil than many other nations on earth, we would produce and export oil to people that can pay more.
Ireland during the famine produced enough food to feed every person. But much of it was exported to other places, that could afford to pay a higher dollar amount to survive.
It’s a global commodity unless there are export restrictions. Russia maintains petrol/diesel prices way below world level thanks to export ban among other things. China did impose temporary export restrictions too. I would not be surprised if Trump will eventually impose export restrictions on refined products to maintain low domestic prices.
You're 90% of the way there.
The US is also sovereign and if things would become really bad the government would just ban exports.
Ireland wasn't sovereign and it turns out, as much as other countries act brotherly (not that the UK really did), nobody really cares about you like you care.
Depends what 'sovereign' implies. The will of the people? Or maybe the will of those that lobby government the hardest (e.g. oil companies)? If the latter, then export bans might not arrive anytime soon.
Sovereign doesn't mean any of those in this context. It means that the US can set its foreign and domestic policies as it pleases. How it decides those policies is another matter.
'Sovereign' here means that the US govt is able to impose export restrictions, not that the People's will or special interests' desires are relevant. Of course 'can' != 'will'.
Interestingly, my dictionary gives the following (amongst other definitions of course):
> possessing supreme or ultimate power: in modern democracies the people's will is in theory sovereign.
Your dictionary is wrong.
For example, in the UK Parliament is sovereign, not the people. That's effectively how it is in representative democracies or republics where there is no fast representative recall mechanism.
The U.S. Constitution doesn't say that Congress is sovereign, but the effect is the same. For that matter, the U.S. President has a great deal of power.
Banning exports would be legitimately catastrophic geopolitically.
Tariffs are mostly just politics and pretty heavily partisan. Banning oil exports would be objectively evil.
I think banning oil exports would never happen since oil shareholders would scream, but why would it be evil?
Some countries rely on oil imports to produce agricultural products, and suddenly cutting them off the global market would kill hundreds of millions from hunger over the next year. Look at what happened in Cuba. Without china giving them old solar panels and used batteries, they would have revolted already. They still have a huge food insecurity issue for next year, especially if the huricane season gets bad.
Because the US started this mess, and it would essentially shift all the cost onto other countries who had no part in it.
The UK parliament thought it a good moral lesson Irish should starve because they were the wrong religion
In modern times we have a special word for what they did, but I've noticed British people are <<extremely>> touchy when it's used.
Britain was barely democratic at the time of the famine. It’s silly to blame the current generation for something their ancestors did. Even if the people you are complaining about were alive then they were unlikely to have any influence over the situation.
Ouch, I found the touchy Brit.
> It’s silly to blame the current generation for something their ancestors did.
As silly as it is, it's a widespread practice around the world.
Thing is, if there is a worldwide shortage, US wins.
To the benefit of those on the political left, an oil shortage shows itself almost exclusively in poor countries (because they actually don't have money to pay), and these tend to not have automotive industries of their own, thus have no reservations about switching to electric cars, which means that any oil consumption decline these days tends to be sticky - when the oil flow resumes, these people won't need it anymore. No one is going to get back to driving an ICE car once they tried electric, even if they initially did it under duress.
Why would any producer in the US sell it locally if they could get more by shipping it?
The real question then is how quickly export ban can be implemented?
About as quickly as the Canadian Oil patch would be flooded with money. All that would do is push oil investments out of the country, and your surplus would become a deficit in the drop of a hat.
Oil is not a single good. Different types of crude produce different products at various grades hence why diesel is so expensive in the US compared to something like natural gas
Since oil companies will make good money from the price hike and exports, I guess they’ll lobby against an export ban?
Why do you think Republicans would institute an export ban? Trump has been touting every export deal he can (especially promises to purchase petroleum), he has even been measuring import/export levels as if foreign countries are cheating the U.S. if they export more to the U.S. than they import from it.
I am not confident that the Democrats would even implement such a ban, as they get pretty big campaign donations from the oil industry as well.
It also wouldn't work. The US has refineries which can only run on various foreign import grades of oil.
The US produces oil which goes to foreign refineries for the same reason.
The effect of "banning exports" is non obvious.
Conversely not starting a war with Iran had some really obvious benefits that every previous administration recognized.
Global trade means domestic prices move even when you’re a next exporter of a commodity.
Demand is genrally destroyed in places where people can't afford the higher oil price which is most definately not the US. Poor countries are ehere people will suffer.
Can't the US producers sell oil outside of the United States, where it's more expensive, thus generating more profits for their shareholders, thus creating a shortage in the United States, thus dragging the prices up to the global equilibrium, thus dissipating any effects of the US producing more oil than it consumes?
There absolutely can be a price shock that will make current prices look economical. Oil is priced on a global market, and if the price is high enough, that might mean many Americans are priced out of some of their own oil. The only way to decouple the domestic and international markets is export and price controls. One need only look to Canada's NEP of the 80's to understand how that's likely to turn out.
Also, the U.S. is currently prosecuting a trade war against Canada that has, thanks to Trump, become a question of sovereignty for Canadians. The U.S.'s largest source of foreign oil is, potentially, one outburst from Trump away from Canada placing export duties on oil. It has been discussed in Canada, and it's viewed as an extreme option, but an option nonetheless. Trump would have to say or do something truly outrageous for that to happen, but his ability to turn allies into enemies should not be underestimated.
Bottom line, fuel could become a lot more expensive, quickly. Even if there's still gasoline to be had, it still qualifies as a shortage if it becomes unaffordable. Fuel prices affect food production, delivery of goods to markets, and pretty much every aspect of the economy.
Oil tankers travel at about the speed of a bicyle. If a price shock does happen it will last for months. If the war with Iran is not resolved promptly, this is precisely what will happen.
You claim there can't be a shortage, yet the rationing has already started.
https://www.newsweek.com/costco-starts-rationing-motor-oil-w...
Alfano said. “Additional Group III production is being built in the U.S., but it won’t be ready until the end of next year.”
Costco is the only one rationing right now.
How about the “deal” with Venezuela? When will that impact anything, if ever?
Venezuelan oil production has declined by about half since Chavez took power. Given the losses they suffered from expropriation, the oil majors aren't particularly keen on returning to Venezuela without stronger guarantees, and oil executives aren't idiot--they understand that Trump is not a reliable partner and that there's a good chance that any deal he strikes with Venezuela will fail to be honored past 2028 (or possibly even before then).
There's also the fact that Venezuelan crude oil is basically among the worst grades of crude oil, the sort of stuff that the refineries don't want to use unless they have no other options. Which also means that as global oil demand hits its maximum (likely within decades), this is also going to be some of the first oil production to be permanently mothballed. With massive necessary investment to get anything running, subpar product, and a very uncertain political situation for the necessary long-term investment, most oil companies are reluctant to invest.
As a result, the only major oil company to have really been contemplating investing in Venezuela is Chevron (which itself appears to be mostly hedging its bets); Trump more recently announced another deal with a supposed major investment in an unnamed operator to extract oil from Venezuela, but without any companies being named, I'm skeptical of how real it is as opposed to merely being a vehicle for graft.
As AnimalMuppet says, if anything does get built, it's on the order of years before anything starts flowing.
I think I heard 3 years at a minimum (don't take that number as gospel, but the order of magnitude is roughly right as a best case). The issue is that Venezuela's oil infrastructure is basically trashed by decades of neglect and mismanagement. It's going to have to be rebuilt, which is billions of dollars and several years.
That's the best case. Worst case (for Venezuelan oil) is that the Republicans lose the House and Senate in November, then the new Congress starts investigating the Venezuela deal, and court cases start flying, and oil companies back out, and the date for the impact of the deal becomes "never".
The issue is that they never expended the infrastructure, never exploited new fields, their old oil field started giving less, so they pumped more water in, which probably lowered the quality of oil, and made it harder on the refineries.
Venezuela oil also need a lot of refinement in any case, and this is where the US made a mistake, because they could just have insisted on refining Venezualan oil rather than directly taking a cut, which will be seen worse by the locals. Basically help more venezualan crude oil to get out of the field than their refinment capacity can afford, and loan them tankers to sell the crude to US refineries. US corpos could have profited a lot more (and if the US could tax them, the US government could have taken a cut) than this weird, dumb and aggressive position of taking a cut.
> I think I heard 3 years at a minimum (don't take that number as gospel, but the order of magnitude is roughly right as a best case).
I appreciate the sentiment but order of magnitude is thrown around to the point of meaninglessness. What is the 'order of magnitude' of 3 years in this case? 1-9? How is 3 years roughly the same as 1 or 9 years? Same order of magnitude, off by a factor of 3 to 9, in years is not close enough I'm afraid.
> It produces a lot lot more than it consumes anyway. There can't be a shortage.
Clearly you haven't been paying attention to oil and gas prices
They should be banning all the financial only/paper traders. If you can’t take delivery you can’t trade.
That really makes absolutely no sense. Derivatives whole purpose is to allow people to hedge their exposure to the underlying, in this case oil prices. Many parties active on these markets have such exposure but are unable or unwilling to take delivery as part of that hedging contract..
The people who take delivery hate that. They want someone else to pay for the oil that isn't in their possession yet. There is a lot of money worth of oil sitting in transport and the people who trade oil are the only ones who want that much money sitting around. (often people play the same market, but they like the separation anyway)
You speak to refiners do you?
Many different people in several unrelated industries. They all don't like money tied up in product. They are happy to take the typical loss of selling the contract to deliver later because they want the cash to pay bills and otherwise invest now.
This is often called diversification in finance. When you have a lot of money tied into one thing it is good to sell some now for that reason even though everybody knows you won't deliver for months.
Diversification is different to derivatives, and also cashflow.
I’ve known plenty of farmers & co-ops. Big, medium, small, family. None used derivatives, at least not after trying them. A lot tried but never worked out like the finance people sold it to them.
It’s always finance people selling them, talking about the need.
It’s great there’s a market for it. You don’t need finance people mucking things up when actual delivery is the problem.
Why?
You don’t need people trying to pick up pennies in front of a gigantic steam roller.
I think the idea is that oil is expensive primarily because of speculators. That seems nuts to me. Oil might (just hypothetically) be expensive due to some kind of supply-demand imbalance.
The big commodity traders have no problem with taking delivery. They use storage and shipping as a part of their strategy. They make many billions each year, even more so when there is disruption.