larry johnson speaks about diesel; 

 

I realize everyone is fixated on the renewal of US attacks on Iran. Iran has just completed its second wave of attacks on US military targets in Bahrain, Kuwait and Jordan. I will write about this tomorrow. Today I want to focus on the true state of the diesel supply in the United States and the implications that holds with respect to the war with Iran. I am indebted to a reader — a gent named Bryan — and Karl Miller for the following analysis. I have condensed and summarized their arguments.

I have said on various podcasts that America has a diesel shortage. Distillate inventories are scraping levels not seen in decades, pump prices for diesel keep climbing, and the trucking, farming, and industrial sectors that run on middle distillates are feeling it. But a careful reader — i.e., Bryan –who worked through the Energy Information Administration’s own weekly data, the Strategic Petroleum Reserve transaction record, and the refiners’ second-quarter results came back with an uncomfortable question — and a veteran energy-market analyst — the talented Karl Miller — who reviewed the same picture pushed it further still. Between them they describe something more consequential than a shortage: an American refining system that is not starved of fuel so much as positioned astride a global scarcity, capturing its rent while the domestic consumer pays its price.

The numbers don’t describe a production failure

Start with what a genuine domestic shortage would look like: falling production, rising demand, and inventories drained to cover the gap. The data show almost the opposite............more............