YHK - yet another hacker news clone

Oil Executives Say the Great Fuel Crisis Is Here

40 points toomuchtodo 1 hour ago 34 comments

chzblck 54 minutes ago | parent

Water wet too?

Animats 52 minutes ago | parent

Diesel fuel at US$8.49 a gallon today. (Redwood City, California.)

grugagag 47 minutes ago | parent

Wow, that climbed quite fast. But I guess it could keep on climbing if there's very little supply...

david38 39 minutes ago | parent

Yup. And my only car is a Ram 2500 crew cab with 6.7L Cummins diesel.

I live in the east bay and my trips to the ocean and Tahoe have dropped to zero.

Founderarcstone 34 minutes ago | parent

wow how long for it to hit $10+

toomuchtodo 27 minutes ago | parent

California Gas Station With $9.99 Diesel Exemplifies Fuel Crisis - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-09-12/californi... | https://archive.today/pLz0v - September 12th, 2026

US Sees Diesel Stocks Falling to 2003 Low Ahead of Peak Demand - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-09-09/us-sees-d... | https://archive.today/Dmnid - September 9th, 2026

anukin 4 minutes ago | parent

That’s cos of California. It used to hit 7 couple of years back as well.

ameen 48 minutes ago | parent

If there isn’t an apt response in the midterms, we’re far beyond the point of return.

infecto 44 minutes ago | parent

I would not be shocked if nothing happens and pleasantly surprised if something does.

jimt1234 35 minutes ago | parent

But I'm gonna get 5-large!!!

3eb7988a1663 24 minutes ago | parent

Right after you get that DOGE check.

smackeyacky 34 minutes ago | parent

There is no apt response other than for the over 50% of Americans who voted in favour of their current situation to all suddenly change their minds about gay frogs and space lasers and stolen elections. I can’t see it happening.

mudil 11 minutes ago | parent

Houthis seized Bob-el Mandeb Strait. Even Saudis couldn't have stopped them. That's not particularly American election issue.

Ukrainian attacks on Russian oil refineries. That's not particularly American election issue.

LPisGood 6 minutes ago | parent

Is it not clear that American election issues are directly related to those things?

Morromist 5 minutes ago | parent

Uh... and Iran and the Straight of Hormuz?? Did you forget to mention that? Is that an election issue? And who funds the Houthis? And why would they want to close the straight to us? Is it something to do with supporting Israel? No? Ok.

JumpCrisscross 5 minutes ago | parent

> Even Saudis couldn't have stopped them. That's not particularly American election issue

Energy prices are absolutely an American election issue. And Iranian proxies seizing the Bab-el Mandeb–and the U.S. being unable to help Saudi Arabia respond militarily while Iran cements control of the Strait of Hormuz–is the direct result of an American foreign policy choice to, once again, blunder into a war in the Middle East.

Morromist 7 minutes ago | parent

I'm excited to see all the nutty takes about oil prices from the same people who don't belive in vaccines.

I kinda hope they bring back the old idea that oil is actually formed out of non-biological matter and so that means its just basically infinitly seeping up from the earth, we just have to drill a bit deeper. But I think that's a little too nerdy for them

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abiogenic_petroleum_origin

jimt1234 41 minutes ago | parent

Melvin from Office Space: I was told that gas prices would fall below $2/gallon.

dabinat 35 minutes ago | parent

I’m guessing their solution is for us to be even more dependent upon oil?

The issue here is that we based our entire economy around a substance that is incredibly price-volatile, run by a cartel, and is plentiful mostly in places that are unstable or hostile to us. I think it’s crazy that we’ve completely normalized the idea that fuel needs to have prices listed outside a gas station because it changes so frequently. Imagine if supermarkets had to list the price of a loaf of bread outside because it kept changing so often.

And it’s really our own fault (or at least the fault of politicians bought by oil companies) because the dangers of oil dependence were obvious at least back in the 70s.

oatmeal1 12 minutes ago | parent

Braess's/Pigou's Paradox that more car lanes cause more traffic was found in the 1920's. We massively overbuilt for the car regardless and keep getting worse traffic to this day.

trueno 25 minutes ago | parent

paywalled in this economy, rek. someone hit me with the synopsis

jcranmer 9 minutes ago | parent

I can't read the article either, but my understanding of the various factors is this:

* Houthis have taken control of all of the Yemeni coastline along the Bab-el-Mandeb Strait (and an island in the middle of it), which gives them the ability to effectively interdict trade through the Red Sea and the Suez Canal, just as Iran has shut down the Strait of Hormuz.

* Not that it matters that much, because the Saudi pipeline that lets it export crude via Yanbu, in the Red Sea, has been disabled, and current estimates suggest that the recovery time is in weeks-to-months. That's about 4-5mbpd of crude oil that's down for the near feature, or about 4% of global crude oil production.

* Now that the summer driving season is over, US refineries are starting to switch from summer blends to winter blends, and this is one of the periods that refineries go down for maintenance. So US refinery capacity is down.

* The supply shock has been mitigated for the past several months by drawing down reserves (note that reserves were relatively high when the war started). This includes both national strategic petroleum reserves, but also corporate reserves (e.g., tanks on-site at refineries). It seems some of these reserves are starting to hit effective 0.

* On top of this, Trump is making it more and more clear that he has no intention of actually doing anything to end to the crisis. For example, he's effectively said that he's not going to do anything before the midterm elections, two months away. Which means the market optimism that the war is going to be over, like, tomorrow is fading.

hyperhello 18 minutes ago | parent

How much land, time, and money, per citizen, would it take to put down enough solar cells to generate each person's basic electrical supply? Is it less than $5K?

zeofig 16 minutes ago | parent

It's $(a lot) because only a tiny fraction of the population can live without goods delivered and produced by diesel fuel.

saturn8601 8 minutes ago | parent

You are assuming the supply of diesel goes to 0. Instead there is a reduction, not elimination and as a result, demand destruction will happen in the US just as its been happening for months outside the US. (This is partially what allowed us to avoid a crisis in March)

Trucks will stop delivering trash (ex. China dollar store crap, lower margin non food items and a billion other nonessential items). Food prices go up, people will do without less desserts or fancy foods but enough deliveries continue with the fuel saved that no one starves.

Now imagine if we replaced only 10% of diesel trucks with electric. Hell just focus on the short haul trucks. That unburned diesel could have helped buffer the remaining fleet.

lazide 11 minutes ago | parent

only a tiny portion of per-individual energy needs are currently electric. roughly guess, 10% or less.

diesel is widely used for things like shipping and other supply chain stuff, so expect knock-on price impacts.

saturn8601 6 minutes ago | parent

Such a shame the US didn't switch at least some of the fleet to electric years ago when it had a chance. Total stupidity. Even to this day my local MAGA town balks at solar panels and just laughs at people who install them. Reality will smack them in the face sooner or later. Right now they are blaming the democratic governor because they only provided a tiny bill credit to citizens to help reduce rates but totally ignoring how the Republican promised nothing.

shoobiedoo 8 minutes ago | parent

I looked into this living in Japan and tired of the electric bill after running AC 24/7 for three months when it's 35 degrees at 65% humidity.

$5500 in solar panels including a battery would be just enough to keep the AC on all summer, and that's being fairly high on the temperature, around 26.

So based on cost alone and not power draw, with the AC off you could comfortably power a fridge, PC, and water heater, I guess? But I'm talking out my ass here

anukin 5 minutes ago | parent

I have done a grid based setup at my house in India and it cost us close to 3k for a 5kw setup with 4 acs. Planning for a complete off grid solution once the efficient panels like hjt and sodium cells become common place. Right now we have acid batteries and they are not very comfortable to handle.

ggm 13 minutes ago | parent

Note that this in no way means the end of oil in the ground or being extracted. "Peak" never meant The Erlich-Simons "we've run out"

psychoslave 4 minutes ago | parent

Civilisations will end before all oils underground is completely extracted, obviously. Because the harder to extract will remain were it stands, and civilisations will turn attention to other forms of energy.