this post was submitted on 14 Apr 2026
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Yeah it's not exactly the end of the world but it's weird how much the problem is being downplayed on the evening news. People act as if the price of gasoline going up a little is the only consequence they'll face.
Of course it's not that bad yet: It took a few weeks before all those tankers not coming out of the strait were missed at their destinations. It takes more time for the reserves to run out, for the refineries to run out of product, more time for their distributors to start missing their deliveries and running out of inventory, and then a little while longer before even the rich countries are forced to consider fuel rationing. It's yet to be seen how the world will adjust to this if it continues.
It's not even really about the refineries not getting any oil supply. Refineries are setup to use SPECIFIC oil feedstock chemistries, if you try to substitute that oil for a different type (light sweet vs heavy sour or mid mid, etc) the process either doesn't work, or it wastes a significant chunk. To convert a refinery to use a different feedstock, it takes a significant amount of engineering time, then you have to effectively SHUT DOWN the whole unit, redo parts of the equipment, then run it back up, test it, and tweak the process variables. Refineries plan this years out and it takes 6+ months to do if nothing goes wrong. Then, they are basically locked into that new feedstock again.
Doing any kind of supply shock like this is dumb for any number of reasons. It's even dumber when the critical components to rework the refineries is in shorter supply because people keep blowing up the existing equipment. Lead times on some of this stuff is in the 20+ month range duing normal times.
There will not be an easy adjustment, the 10-20% loss in supply figure is misleading at best. This is going to impact everything that uses oil, plastic, fertilizer, lubricants, valves, electronics, etc and its not going to be a 10-20% impact...