Last week I sounded the alarm that the U.S. could face a diesel shortage heading into the October peak demand season. Now, we are just one week away. In today’s video, we’re moving past broad warnings and looking at the hard numbers. I've built a model to estimate our potential shortfall in October—including whether our tight inventories could breach physical minimum operational levels in the worst case scenario and send record-high prices surging even further.

This seems like a good analysis of US distillate markets to me. The only bias I can pick up from his videos on this subject is that he's against exporting diesel, but doesn't seem like a MAGA goober at first glance.

In his status quo projection at around 20 minutes in, it would only be the worst diesel shortage in decades with prices still increasing through October at least. That's if US refineries defer normal seasonal maintenance and keep running at peak capacity, which I don't believe could have any consequences.

In the worst case scenario at 22m, US refineries doing seasonal maintenance and exports remaining elevated results in a national diesel inventory 15% below the amount of fuel needed for production and physical diesel shortages become expected.

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[–] 4 points 2 days ago (2 children)

Hmm, ya. In your opinion, do you think we have long before the unleaded prices start shooting up along with diesel's?

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  • [–] [S] 8 points 2 days ago (1 child)

    I doubt there will be much of a lag time. All that gasoline is transported by diesel trucks, diesel trains, and ships running bunker fuel. Currently it seems like the costs are starting to erode the edges of those systems. Owner-operator truckers in particular are reporting $1000 fill-ups and trying to build toward an October strike. That's upwards of 15% the national trucker fleet, with the corporate truckers using it as an opportunity to price gouge retailers that are already trying to sell things we can't afford. There's also the element of consumer anxiety which COVID taught me is hard to predict. Fuel shortages will come from both the lack of delivery and people panic buying before that hits.

    At least personally I'm treating this week's prices as the floor for the rest of the year. When the things driving the crisis aren't resolved and are feeding into each other the longer they go on, the only certainty is that the best time to buy anything is yesterday.

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