Glad to read this analysis. Since I have been an environmentalist since 1970, I am hoping all the newbies finally realize you CANNOT have a clean world without reducing fossil fuel consumption. AND this reduction in fossil fuel consumption, whether voluntary or from supply destruction, will come at a cost to affluent western lifestyles. Oops. And if you have been believing all the eco-modernist hype, the greenwashing, the astorturfing, the nonsense the tech bros are spewing out, and all the nationalist paranoia that makes you want to buy a firearm for protection - Shame on You! Hopefully you now see that the peasant lifestyle is the way to safety as the billionaires burn the world down in search of short-term profit. If YOU would have listened to US fifty-five years ago, WE wouldn't be in trouble NOW.
It's unclear what the message "to US fifty-five years ago" was?
Global population was under 1billion in 1800 before we started burning fossil fuels. So as a starting point, we can assume that if we were to somehow politically legislate / force global hydrocarbon consumption down to zero globally only 1billion people could be alive. And since hydrocarbons will effectively run out anyway in 100 years or so, guess how many people the laws of physics will allow to be alive in a century or so?
In 1970, the apogee of the Movement, there were plenty of us “dirty hippie commie pinkos” willing to do the grunt work to build a better society. AND we built our case very well during the General Strike on campuses across the country that year. Instead, mainstream Amerika gloried in the fact that Nixon’s troops (and the police) were gunning down students on campus. Just like they gloried in the bloodshed at the Democratic Convention two years before. It was nasty. By 1972, Nixon had increased his power BECAUSE mainstream Amerika wouldn’t listen to those of us already working in alternative ventures like co-ops, back-to-the-land collectives and organizing in factories as well as on campus. And the War kept getting worse and worse. Then Watergate, the Arab Oil Embargo, the switch to fiat currency and the petrodollar all played their part in destroying the relatively stable socio-economic system in the US. The US finally got blown out of Vietnam and Carter was elected President in 1976. The downturn continued and Carter’s support of the Shah of Iran presaged both men’s downfall. By 1980, a washed-up actor became President and he set out to close the door for opportunity for blue-collar workers in the US. I was there. I saw it all happen. Deficit spending increased dramatically and the scandals kept coming. You know the rest.
In 1980, I started saying, “If YOU would have listened to US ten years ago, WE wouldn’t be in trouble NOW.” Every five years I update my mantra. There are all kinds of people complaining right now on Substack and all across social media. But most of them just point out the problems and whine, whine, whine. WE actually had a plan and I have been working on my end of it for over fifty-five years. If even a small percentage of Amerikans had helped us build a better world in 1970, instead of throwing up roadblocks at every opportunity, we would ALL be in better shape. So . . .
If YOU would have listened to US fifty-five years ago, WE wouldn’t be in trouble NOW.
Still got no idea what your trying to say: in other words name your policy options that would reduce fossil fuel use, without causing standards of living to decrease.
Natasha - You should go back and re-read my original post a couple more times. There is NO way to reduce fossil fuel use without causing living standards to decrease. BUT the living standards of the US, UK and the rest of the West are based on wasteful excess and they are the main culprits in our current dilemma, so this isn't as bad as you think.
If you want policy options there have been a plethora proposed just since the 1960s. Social activists in previous ages had plenty before then too.
You have lost the plot somehow. Try coming up with your own solutions that fit your own unique situation. Off-the-shelf solutions don't have much value in this unique time and place in history. My third book is all about how to do this, but you don't have to read it to get started. Start by doing research on paradigms, shifting your paradigms, and paradigms for adaptation.
There are options to improve the quality of life and decrease energy use. One obvious step is to build fridges or washing machines to last 25-30 years, not 5-10 years. Also make them repairable so that small components can be replaced if they break.
Electric kettles are even worse. Some cheap ones only work for one, two or three years. 50 years ago they could be expected to last decades.
It's actually very inconvenient to normal people if their domestic appliances break down every 5-10 years. But the resulting extra sales increase GDP. So bankers and economists are probably ecstatically happy with it.
When we moved to France, we cut our per capita energy consumption approximately in half. There are many reasons France, and other European countries, have a much lower energy usage. Smaller refrigerators, drying clothes on the line instead of with a dryer, hand washing instead of dishwashers, more mass transit, smaller roads, smaller cars, more diversity in a smaller area, etc. The last time I checked the per capita energy usage (data from which comes from the CIA factbook I think), the UK was at about 40%, Germany 50%, Spain 25%, and Portugal 20% of US daily per capita energy usage. We certainly don't feel deprived with using about half of the US average. In fact we have a better life than we did back in the US.
Thanks for responding Walter. Your original post states:-
"you CANNOT have a clean world without reducing fossil fuel consumption [...] the peasant lifestyle is the way to safety"
In other words, are you proposing we go back to pre 1800 life styles, when the global average life expectancy at birth was around 30 years, and total global population was under 1 billion humans?
However, this is going to happen anyway in about a century or so since fossil fuels are a finite supply. So my question is, should 'we' somehow politically force and / or try to manage this geological / thermodynamic reality? Or just let it happen anyway?
The latter looks the most likely scenario, IMHO given how badly humans has so far been managing our short time on this pale blue dot.
Bravo. Yes, I am proposing to all that will listen that we need to go back to a pre-1800 lifestyle. Of course it takes time to transition. Your statistic of life expectancy at birth is just a fear tactic, usually used by eco-modernists to rationalize their choice to only do a little tweaking instead of real change. I am hoping you are not one of those.
Yes we are going to get dieoff and it is NOT a century or so away. In my first book I predicted dieoff will strart sometime between 2020-2030. Then a downward net population decline to 2050 and then a less abrupt decline until 2100, when I think global population will stabilize at 1-1.5 billion.
Trying to hasten collapse and dieoff is not a good strategy. I found out in the 1960s that Amerika thrives better on negative energy than positive energy. Trying to destroy Amerika just makes it stronger. So just prepare yourself and your family and your community as much as you can. As for managing collapse, that is certainly a possibility. My second book is titled Hints for Managing Collapse (2014). If you are in the US, you can get it, as well as my other two books, through the County Library Lending Service. This connects all county libraries across the US. It wouldn't even cost you the pittance you would need to buy it. You can get a Kindle e-book sample for free.
“Price hikes and export bans” may be the least of our worries. This article implicitly suggests many other longer-term “repercussions”. If the world cannot find enough of the ‘right’ crude oil, or if we ‘stop fossil fuels’, then many other things stop or slow dramatically – e.g., food production, just-in-time supply chains, bulk transportation, provisioning of large cities, etc., resulting in factory shutdowns, massive unemployment, mass migrations, civil unrest, economic implosion (which would be a good thing were it a planned orderly contraction over decades) and suffering or death for many millions (billions?). On the other hand, if the Israel/US vs Iran war ends, things get back to normal in a few months, and the world remains addicted to fossil fuels, then we risk runaway global heating, major hits on food production, large areas rendered uninhabitable, abandonment of large cities, mass migrations, economic implosion, geopolitical chaos and suffering or death for many millions (billions?). Interesting, too, that the green renewable energy (electricity, actually) doesn’t much figure as a way out of any such scenario.
Thank you for the insights. I am in a conflict with someone now who pushes the narrative that the movie Greenwashed has no technical value. I find no reason to watch it, but from what I can tell this person believes we should not be telling high birth countries to slow down and instead kick up the renewable wagon at home. Racist undertones follows the reasoning. I cannot help but want to flip the coin with a deal that would never fly like stop the renewable train then we can talk.
Calling these technologies "renewable" is cringe-worthy. If a photo-voltaic panel were renewable, it would be a leaf. If a wind turbine were renewable, it would be a tree. These technologies would be accurately called "intermittents," which is the term I use for them. They aren't "green" either, whatever "green" means in gaslight-speak. They require fossil combustion at every stage of their lifespan: mining, transportation, manufacturing, installation, grid connection, stabilization compensation for intermittency on an alternating current transmission system, removal, and disposal. And that doesn't even touch the vast amount of agricultural or wilderness land that must be cleared to support them. They aren't dispatchable, which is why adding them to grids geared for 24/7/365 reliable service ends up increasing nat gas combustion. They don't help with transportation at all.
The only valid use for photo-voltaics is disconnected rooftop, with batteries for lighting and otherwise all appliances rejiggered for DC. This imposes both a lower energy lifestyle and synchronization with solar cycles. It still isn't sustainable, nevermind "green" or "renewable," but it's a step in the right direction if you want to wean off the high energy fossil fueled soon-to-be train wreck. Look up Living Energy Farm.
"The hole, the world economy has found itself in, is just getting deeper and deeper with every day".
Yay!! Maybe this will cascade into the collapse of the global market economy. That collapse is going to happen sometime this century and sooner is definitely better than later. Thank you Donald Trump!
I think we are really decelerationists. For at least 50 years, I've wanted economic growth to slow down and then go in reverse. Same with population.
But now it seems that the only way to get deceleration is to have the global economy break down. We decided not to use any brakes and now we are going to crash into a wall.
Mr. Hideaway on un-denial.com proved that you can't decelerate without crashing. It's because of the best-first principle. You mine the best quality, easiest to access minerals first. When those are gone, you mine lower quality ore that requires more energy, water and chemicals to refine, and you dig deeper into the earth, spending more energy on both digging and transporting. Also, transporting more (lower quality) ore per unit mineral requires more energy. Rinse and repeat.
Serious question: Does the The Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment have any actual qualified international petroleum market analysts? Or am I being naïve, and they just pay extortionate fees to consultants for garbage advice?
I don’t think they’re using consultants. The consultants are usually the ones with brains who they pay to tell them what’s going on because all the actual staff couldn’t organise their way out of a wet paper bag. I suspect if they went to any remotely competent consultant they’d be telling them some very bad news so they’ll be making up numbers in-house.
Completely delusional, and as I should have realised, it looks like they rely on the IEA for all their international market intelligence. But even so, the spin that shortfalls can be made up with imports from the US is on a different level of fantasy. I wonder if anyone has made OIA requests to find out what advice the minister is getting?
"On top of that US refineries themselves are designed to take heavier, more sour (high sulfur) grades than the light sweet (low sulfur) crude American fields produce."
You mean NOW produce. The U.S. used to produce mostly heavy oil. I believe this confuses people, why US refineries process heavy oils. That's what we used to produce. But now we need ME oil or Venezuela, etc.
It gets more confusing when you add the fact that classic Texas/Pennsylvania crude wasn't nearly as heavy or sour as the Saudi or Venezuelan stuff that the Gulf Coast refineries were purpose-built for. Basically, we ran out of domestic medium in the 1970s, switched our refineries to foreign heavy, then (surprise!) invented fracking and unlocked a flood of domestic light. Is that about right?
Footnote 2 deserves its own article! Seriously, the mainstream pundits are groping to explain the S&P hitting record highs right now, as an obvious economic tsunami rolls in.
The dividends don't have to go back into the stock market to avoid taxation. They can go into commodities instead. Even without the physical market, there are plenty of ETF opportunities in gold, silver, platinum, palladium, rhodium, even copper. I suspect an increase in this trend, which will drag the physical commodity spot prices higher.
Hey, B, another good one. One thing to ponder — what you are calling American oil and other fossil fuels is actually transnational oil owned and operated by companies that put their assets where it makes most sense, economically, for them. So all these global flows are constantly monitored and there’s an attempt to adjust them for maximum profit at every moment. The companies don’t really care about national concerns of governments, except when the government attempts to control their operations. They lobby heavily to prevent that. Otherwise, your analysis is good. You could have added that all this is why the oil companies have started building more plastics plants around the world and increasing their production of these products. Hits in the Middle East on these plants have been a problem. But they’ll ramp up production in places like the US to compensate.
It depends on where you are. Some countries keep more of a stockpile than others. South Korean seems to be quickly heading into dangerous times, while its neighbour Japan planned for a little longer.
I may post more details another time about my thoughts on this horrific situation that man has gotten himself into through hedonism. In the meantime, thank you, An Honest Sorcerer, for providing us with this information and data. I first heard about you on Nate Hagen's YT podcast.
Glad to read this analysis. Since I have been an environmentalist since 1970, I am hoping all the newbies finally realize you CANNOT have a clean world without reducing fossil fuel consumption. AND this reduction in fossil fuel consumption, whether voluntary or from supply destruction, will come at a cost to affluent western lifestyles. Oops. And if you have been believing all the eco-modernist hype, the greenwashing, the astorturfing, the nonsense the tech bros are spewing out, and all the nationalist paranoia that makes you want to buy a firearm for protection - Shame on You! Hopefully you now see that the peasant lifestyle is the way to safety as the billionaires burn the world down in search of short-term profit. If YOU would have listened to US fifty-five years ago, WE wouldn't be in trouble NOW.
It's unclear what the message "to US fifty-five years ago" was?
Global population was under 1billion in 1800 before we started burning fossil fuels. So as a starting point, we can assume that if we were to somehow politically legislate / force global hydrocarbon consumption down to zero globally only 1billion people could be alive. And since hydrocarbons will effectively run out anyway in 100 years or so, guess how many people the laws of physics will allow to be alive in a century or so?
In 1970, the apogee of the Movement, there were plenty of us “dirty hippie commie pinkos” willing to do the grunt work to build a better society. AND we built our case very well during the General Strike on campuses across the country that year. Instead, mainstream Amerika gloried in the fact that Nixon’s troops (and the police) were gunning down students on campus. Just like they gloried in the bloodshed at the Democratic Convention two years before. It was nasty. By 1972, Nixon had increased his power BECAUSE mainstream Amerika wouldn’t listen to those of us already working in alternative ventures like co-ops, back-to-the-land collectives and organizing in factories as well as on campus. And the War kept getting worse and worse. Then Watergate, the Arab Oil Embargo, the switch to fiat currency and the petrodollar all played their part in destroying the relatively stable socio-economic system in the US. The US finally got blown out of Vietnam and Carter was elected President in 1976. The downturn continued and Carter’s support of the Shah of Iran presaged both men’s downfall. By 1980, a washed-up actor became President and he set out to close the door for opportunity for blue-collar workers in the US. I was there. I saw it all happen. Deficit spending increased dramatically and the scandals kept coming. You know the rest.
In 1980, I started saying, “If YOU would have listened to US ten years ago, WE wouldn’t be in trouble NOW.” Every five years I update my mantra. There are all kinds of people complaining right now on Substack and all across social media. But most of them just point out the problems and whine, whine, whine. WE actually had a plan and I have been working on my end of it for over fifty-five years. If even a small percentage of Amerikans had helped us build a better world in 1970, instead of throwing up roadblocks at every opportunity, we would ALL be in better shape. So . . .
If YOU would have listened to US fifty-five years ago, WE wouldn’t be in trouble NOW.
Still got no idea what your trying to say: in other words name your policy options that would reduce fossil fuel use, without causing standards of living to decrease.
Natasha - You should go back and re-read my original post a couple more times. There is NO way to reduce fossil fuel use without causing living standards to decrease. BUT the living standards of the US, UK and the rest of the West are based on wasteful excess and they are the main culprits in our current dilemma, so this isn't as bad as you think.
If you want policy options there have been a plethora proposed just since the 1960s. Social activists in previous ages had plenty before then too.
You have lost the plot somehow. Try coming up with your own solutions that fit your own unique situation. Off-the-shelf solutions don't have much value in this unique time and place in history. My third book is all about how to do this, but you don't have to read it to get started. Start by doing research on paradigms, shifting your paradigms, and paradigms for adaptation.
There are options to improve the quality of life and decrease energy use. One obvious step is to build fridges or washing machines to last 25-30 years, not 5-10 years. Also make them repairable so that small components can be replaced if they break.
Electric kettles are even worse. Some cheap ones only work for one, two or three years. 50 years ago they could be expected to last decades.
It's actually very inconvenient to normal people if their domestic appliances break down every 5-10 years. But the resulting extra sales increase GDP. So bankers and economists are probably ecstatically happy with it.
Cory Doctorow. Enshittification.
When we moved to France, we cut our per capita energy consumption approximately in half. There are many reasons France, and other European countries, have a much lower energy usage. Smaller refrigerators, drying clothes on the line instead of with a dryer, hand washing instead of dishwashers, more mass transit, smaller roads, smaller cars, more diversity in a smaller area, etc. The last time I checked the per capita energy usage (data from which comes from the CIA factbook I think), the UK was at about 40%, Germany 50%, Spain 25%, and Portugal 20% of US daily per capita energy usage. We certainly don't feel deprived with using about half of the US average. In fact we have a better life than we did back in the US.
Thanks for responding Walter. Your original post states:-
"you CANNOT have a clean world without reducing fossil fuel consumption [...] the peasant lifestyle is the way to safety"
In other words, are you proposing we go back to pre 1800 life styles, when the global average life expectancy at birth was around 30 years, and total global population was under 1 billion humans?
However, this is going to happen anyway in about a century or so since fossil fuels are a finite supply. So my question is, should 'we' somehow politically force and / or try to manage this geological / thermodynamic reality? Or just let it happen anyway?
The latter looks the most likely scenario, IMHO given how badly humans has so far been managing our short time on this pale blue dot.
Bravo. Yes, I am proposing to all that will listen that we need to go back to a pre-1800 lifestyle. Of course it takes time to transition. Your statistic of life expectancy at birth is just a fear tactic, usually used by eco-modernists to rationalize their choice to only do a little tweaking instead of real change. I am hoping you are not one of those.
Yes we are going to get dieoff and it is NOT a century or so away. In my first book I predicted dieoff will strart sometime between 2020-2030. Then a downward net population decline to 2050 and then a less abrupt decline until 2100, when I think global population will stabilize at 1-1.5 billion.
Trying to hasten collapse and dieoff is not a good strategy. I found out in the 1960s that Amerika thrives better on negative energy than positive energy. Trying to destroy Amerika just makes it stronger. So just prepare yourself and your family and your community as much as you can. As for managing collapse, that is certainly a possibility. My second book is titled Hints for Managing Collapse (2014). If you are in the US, you can get it, as well as my other two books, through the County Library Lending Service. This connects all county libraries across the US. It wouldn't even cost you the pittance you would need to buy it. You can get a Kindle e-book sample for free.
We’re now trying to catch up to 1968.
True, but it would probably have just delayed the trouble, though maybe for centuries.
“Price hikes and export bans” may be the least of our worries. This article implicitly suggests many other longer-term “repercussions”. If the world cannot find enough of the ‘right’ crude oil, or if we ‘stop fossil fuels’, then many other things stop or slow dramatically – e.g., food production, just-in-time supply chains, bulk transportation, provisioning of large cities, etc., resulting in factory shutdowns, massive unemployment, mass migrations, civil unrest, economic implosion (which would be a good thing were it a planned orderly contraction over decades) and suffering or death for many millions (billions?). On the other hand, if the Israel/US vs Iran war ends, things get back to normal in a few months, and the world remains addicted to fossil fuels, then we risk runaway global heating, major hits on food production, large areas rendered uninhabitable, abandonment of large cities, mass migrations, economic implosion, geopolitical chaos and suffering or death for many millions (billions?). Interesting, too, that the green renewable energy (electricity, actually) doesn’t much figure as a way out of any such scenario.
Thank you for the insights. I am in a conflict with someone now who pushes the narrative that the movie Greenwashed has no technical value. I find no reason to watch it, but from what I can tell this person believes we should not be telling high birth countries to slow down and instead kick up the renewable wagon at home. Racist undertones follows the reasoning. I cannot help but want to flip the coin with a deal that would never fly like stop the renewable train then we can talk.
Calling these technologies "renewable" is cringe-worthy. If a photo-voltaic panel were renewable, it would be a leaf. If a wind turbine were renewable, it would be a tree. These technologies would be accurately called "intermittents," which is the term I use for them. They aren't "green" either, whatever "green" means in gaslight-speak. They require fossil combustion at every stage of their lifespan: mining, transportation, manufacturing, installation, grid connection, stabilization compensation for intermittency on an alternating current transmission system, removal, and disposal. And that doesn't even touch the vast amount of agricultural or wilderness land that must be cleared to support them. They aren't dispatchable, which is why adding them to grids geared for 24/7/365 reliable service ends up increasing nat gas combustion. They don't help with transportation at all.
The only valid use for photo-voltaics is disconnected rooftop, with batteries for lighting and otherwise all appliances rejiggered for DC. This imposes both a lower energy lifestyle and synchronization with solar cycles. It still isn't sustainable, nevermind "green" or "renewable," but it's a step in the right direction if you want to wean off the high energy fossil fueled soon-to-be train wreck. Look up Living Energy Farm.
"The hole, the world economy has found itself in, is just getting deeper and deeper with every day".
Yay!! Maybe this will cascade into the collapse of the global market economy. That collapse is going to happen sometime this century and sooner is definitely better than later. Thank you Donald Trump!
Ahhh....an accelerationist! But it's true that confronting problems when they're not too serious has some serious pluses....
If I have had the same position for over 50 years, am I somehow an accelerationist?
I think we are really decelerationists. For at least 50 years, I've wanted economic growth to slow down and then go in reverse. Same with population.
But now it seems that the only way to get deceleration is to have the global economy break down. We decided not to use any brakes and now we are going to crash into a wall.
Mr. Hideaway on un-denial.com proved that you can't decelerate without crashing. It's because of the best-first principle. You mine the best quality, easiest to access minerals first. When those are gone, you mine lower quality ore that requires more energy, water and chemicals to refine, and you dig deeper into the earth, spending more energy on both digging and transporting. Also, transporting more (lower quality) ore per unit mineral requires more energy. Rinse and repeat.
https://un-denial.com/2026/05/10/by-hideaway-scaling-laws-in-nature-and-human-civilization/
You mean like at least 100 years ago?
Was America ever great in the first place?
More like a loud teenager with an inferiority complex and a trust fund, pretending a lot and bullying its way to the top.
https://gabylovemore.substack.com/p/the-great-nation-mythology-tested?r=ycowa&utm_medium=ios
It *was* great - before Criminal Columbus arrived there.
I would not put all of it on the shoulder of one man , but I get your point....
Excellent piece, thanks! Meanwhile in NZ the government seems to think that imports from the USA can makeup any domestic shortfall... Lol
Serious question: Does the The Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment have any actual qualified international petroleum market analysts? Or am I being naïve, and they just pay extortionate fees to consultants for garbage advice?
I don’t think they’re using consultants. The consultants are usually the ones with brains who they pay to tell them what’s going on because all the actual staff couldn’t organise their way out of a wet paper bag. I suspect if they went to any remotely competent consultant they’d be telling them some very bad news so they’ll be making up numbers in-house.
According to google, this page was updated five days ago:
https://www.mbie.govt.nz/building-and-energy/energy-and-natural-resources/energy-generation-and-markets/liquid-fuel-market/fuel-supply-disruption-response/fuel-security
Completely delusional, and as I should have realised, it looks like they rely on the IEA for all their international market intelligence. But even so, the spin that shortfalls can be made up with imports from the US is on a different level of fantasy. I wonder if anyone has made OIA requests to find out what advice the minister is getting?
Thanks for the link. Written by a first year ECON101 student ? Apparently membership of the IEA gives NZ insurance against supply disruptions. Loll
I know right! 🙄
"On top of that US refineries themselves are designed to take heavier, more sour (high sulfur) grades than the light sweet (low sulfur) crude American fields produce."
You mean NOW produce. The U.S. used to produce mostly heavy oil. I believe this confuses people, why US refineries process heavy oils. That's what we used to produce. But now we need ME oil or Venezuela, etc.
It gets more confusing when you add the fact that classic Texas/Pennsylvania crude wasn't nearly as heavy or sour as the Saudi or Venezuelan stuff that the Gulf Coast refineries were purpose-built for. Basically, we ran out of domestic medium in the 1970s, switched our refineries to foreign heavy, then (surprise!) invented fracking and unlocked a flood of domestic light. Is that about right?
Reads like you know more than I!
Footnote 2 deserves its own article! Seriously, the mainstream pundits are groping to explain the S&P hitting record highs right now, as an obvious economic tsunami rolls in.
The dividends don't have to go back into the stock market to avoid taxation. They can go into commodities instead. Even without the physical market, there are plenty of ETF opportunities in gold, silver, platinum, palladium, rhodium, even copper. I suspect an increase in this trend, which will drag the physical commodity spot prices higher.
I say "Make America Grate Again"
Hey, B, another good one. One thing to ponder — what you are calling American oil and other fossil fuels is actually transnational oil owned and operated by companies that put their assets where it makes most sense, economically, for them. So all these global flows are constantly monitored and there’s an attempt to adjust them for maximum profit at every moment. The companies don’t really care about national concerns of governments, except when the government attempts to control their operations. They lobby heavily to prevent that. Otherwise, your analysis is good. You could have added that all this is why the oil companies have started building more plastics plants around the world and increasing their production of these products. Hits in the Middle East on these plants have been a problem. But they’ll ramp up production in places like the US to compensate.
“davidinamonthorayearoradecadeon April 8, 2026 at 10:17 pm said:
“As we have mentioned on this site previously, the US is NOT energy independent for the heavy crudes which produce jet fuel (and diesel).”
true!. . .
the actual energy realities of North America.
Canada and the USA have a business relationship.
Canada WANTS to produce 6+ mbpd of HEAVY oil but they only have 2 mbpd of refining capacity.
why just 2? because that’s about all they really need.
Canada WANTS to export 4+ mbpd of heavy oil because they make lots of MONEY doing so.
almost all of the existing infrastructure for Canadian exports is to the USA.
this may change someday but it will be a long and slow process.
Canada and the USA are both in very good shape for crude oil production and refining of ALL end products including diesel and jet fuel.
prices are higher, no big deal, it’s mildly recessionary.
higher priced diesel and jet fuel are far better than unavailable diesel and jet fuel.” ?
https://surplusenergyeconomics.wordpress.com/2026/04/02/321-dont-mention-the-war-part-two/#comments
Low ERoEI peanut butter.
So, when does the actual shortage hit the pumps? And what does that look like?
It depends on where you are. Some countries keep more of a stockpile than others. South Korean seems to be quickly heading into dangerous times, while its neighbour Japan planned for a little longer.
https://www.linkedin.com/posts/how-did-canada-not-saudi-arabia-share-7454522359757037570-kBcI?utm_source=social_share_send&utm_medium=ios_app&rcm=ACoAAEpdN90BGKkimAWS0BvJXqJZFmyPXKnvncU&utm_campaign=copy_link
Canada is the largest supplier
Most of the population are used to only see the crude barrels of oil extracted, while ignoring oil needs to be processed in order to be used.
I may post more details another time about my thoughts on this horrific situation that man has gotten himself into through hedonism. In the meantime, thank you, An Honest Sorcerer, for providing us with this information and data. I first heard about you on Nate Hagen's YT podcast.
The myth of American exceptionalism…
https://gabylovemore.substack.com/p/the-great-nation-mythology-tested?r=ycowa&utm_medium=ios
USA: "Cleanest dirty shirt", except maybe Russia now...
;-/