🇺🇸 🇮🇷 CRUDE OIL VS REFINED FUEL - TWO DIFFERENT THINGS!
Here's the part of the oil story nobody is explaining.
Crude oil is back to prewar levels through the Strait of Hormuz. But the fuel, the actual diesel and gasoline, is not.
Refined shipments out of there are down to 677,000 barrels a day, from 3.6 million before the war.
Why the gap? Because you can reroute a barrel of crude, but you can't reroute a refinery. Crude gets piped and shuttled around Iran. Fuel has to be made at a plant, and those plants took damage in the war. Ukraine is pounding Russia's refineries too, so the whole world is short on diesel.
And here is where it hits home. Since 2020 America shut down 11 refineries. We can pump the crude, but we have been closing the very plants that turn it into fuel!
That is why diesel is at record highs. It is not a crude problem. It is a refining problem.
We do not just need to pump our own oil. We need to refine our own fuel!