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- Hacker News
- paywalled in this economy, rek. someone hit me with the synopsisby trueno
- by bobtheborg
- 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.
by jcranmer - But d-daddy Trump said it's fault of Ukraine not our pointless war with Iran, definetelyby lapkaaaa
- by tim333
- Melvin from Office Space: I was told that gas prices would fall below $2/gallon.by jimt1234
- His name was Milton.by KingMob
- It's all fracked upby treebeard901
- 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"by ggm
- 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.by psychoslave
- Diesel fuel at US$8.49 a gallon today. (Redwood City, California.)by Animats
- 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.
by david38 - wow how long for it to hit $10+
- The city with no redwoods?by nezi
- Still cheaper than London, at £1.89/L
E10 petrol is £1.64/L, for ref.
by NamTaf - That’s cos of California. It used to hit 7 couple of years back as well.by anukin
- Wow, that climbed quite fast. But I guess it could keep on climbing if there's very little supply...by grugagag
- That's around €1.96 per litre. Still cheaper than Europeby fy20
- Oil tankers move about as fast a bicycle. If fuel prices start really spiking tomorrow and the conflict is resolved the very next day, the crisis will still last as long as it takes for bicycles to fan out across the globe. i.e. Probably a month or two. At least.
If a resolution to the conflict is not reached in very short order (i.e. days, not weeks), the crisis will be in full swing right when the midterms are going on. Of course, foresight and the ability to understand consequences do not seem to be strong points of this administration.
by beloch - by alhaja
- Still paywalled.by timbit42
- 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?by hyperhello
- It's $(a lot) because only a tiny fraction of the population can live without goods delivered and produced by diesel fuel.by zeofig
- 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.
by lazide - Our house is all-electric. We have a 60 panel, 24 kw array that would probably cover all of our needs if it weren't shaded in the afternoon, and we have a real winter here, so the heat pump runs hard, and we use a substantial amount of electricity. About 1250 square feet of panels in total. Equipment costs about $20k-$30k in the US, not including batteries or electrician install. The actual array was pretty easy to set up.
On the global market, you can get the equipment for much less, the same inverter is a fraction of the cost that the UL listed American company version costs, the panels are a good bit less. But in the US, this stuff gets marked up pretty hard.
If your main load is for summer A/C, with a mild winter, the generation and usage line up much better.
by ericd - Electrical generation is largely separate from imported crude oil (what the article is about).
It takes a lot more than $5K to build a system that can replace a household's energy use. For 24 hour coverage you need substantial battery capacity, too.
To cover theoretical EV charging it gets even more expensive.
Prices continue to come down, but it still takes a lot to actually replace all of a household's energy usage with solar.
by Aurornis - 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
by shoobiedoo - It looks like solar can already power about a third of American household demand, and is on track to get to two thirds within five years [1]. (Commercial and utility is leading the acceleration, even into Q2 2026.)
That said, we're hitting 2030 with ~20% of American electricity coming from solar and wind versus 40 to 60% under the IRA baselines. We may wind up in a long-term spiral where our adversaries have not only more manufacturing capability and structurally lower labour costs, but structurally cheaper energy, too.
[1] https://seia.org/research-resources/us-solar-market-insight/
- If there isn’t an apt response in the midterms, we’re far beyond the point of return.by ameen
- I would not be shocked if nothing happens and pleasantly surprised if something does.by infecto