Diesel – American Conservative Movement

EV Semi Prices Need to Fall 30-50% To Compete With Diesel, a New Study Says

Tyler Durden, Zero Hedge — Fri, 13 Sep 2024 10:37:50 +0000

(Zero Hedge)—We already know that emission free or EV trucking isn’t a cost efficient endeavor, which is why many companies like Pepsi have done token purchases of a couple of EV semis, but are still using ICE 18 wheelers to get product to shelves.

Today a new article from Reuters lays out the numbers behind why emission free trucking remains a fallacy: emissions-free trucks need to drop in price by up to 50% to compete with diesel models, according to a McKinsey study.

Currently, less than 2% of the EU’s heavy freight vehicles are electric or hydrogen-powered, but this must rise to 40% of new sales by 2030 to meet EU climate goals. Electric trucks cost 2.5-3 times more to produce than diesel ones, and logistics companies are reluctant to bear the higher costs, making this target challenging, the report says.

McKinsey suggests electric truck prices should be no more than 30% higher than diesel models, requiring major battery advancements.

Reuters writes that a 25% reduction in charging costs and 900,000 private charging points by 2035, needing a $20 billion investment, are also key to the EU’s CO2 strategy. Additionally, European truckmakers face competition from Chinese manufacturers, who have captured 20% of the bus market with cheaper products.

A co-author of the McKinsey study said: “I don’t think it’s impossible that this could actually happen in electric trucks over time.”

Recall we wrote earlier this year that demand for electric semis was plunging.

“The economics just don’t work for most companies,” Robert Sanchez, the chief executive of Ryder, said in May.

Ryder’s experience highlights the difficulties state and federal governments encounter in encouraging truckers to transition from polluting diesel rigs to zero-emissions vehicles, the report says.

It also indicates that significant improvements in battery weight, range, and charging times are necessary for battery-electric trucks to effectively compete with diesel rigs in the cost-sensitive freight industry.

Rakesh Aneja, head of eMobility at Daimler Truck North America, told Wall Street Journal: “Quite frankly, demand has not been as strong as what we would like.”

America’s Diesel Fuel Shortage Could CRIPPLE the Supply Chain by Thanksgiving

Arsenia Toledo, Natural News — Sat, 05 Nov 2022 23:46:19 +0000

The supply of diesel in the United States is still in a precarious position, and an insider in the auto industry warned if the crisis continues for longer it could permanently damage the already-weakened supply chain by Thanksgiving.

Automobile industry expert Eric Peters noted in an interview with radio host Kate Dalley that there will likely be a massive shortfall in diesel in the coming weeks “and that’s going to be felt economy-wide.” (Related: America is running out of gas: Surging demand leaves US with LESS THAN A MONTH’S supply of diesel.)

“Most people don’t appreciate the importance of diesel macro in the economy because most people drive a gas-powered car,” he said. “They don’t understand that everything that they buy pretty much is shipped from where it was made or where it was grown via a diesel-powered heavy truck and involved diesel-powered machinery to produce it.”

“If the supply of [diesel] goes down even 10, 20 percent, that is going to result in significant ramifications, generally speaking, across the entire economy,” Peters added. “Unless the numbers are completely inaccurate, and they may well be, I do think it’s inevitable that we’re going to see some of these dislocations right around Thanksgiving.”

Peters is referring to a report released by the Energy Information Administration (EIA) in October suggesting that the U.S. has just around 25 days of diesel supply remaining, which would put the country at zero diesel supply around the fourth week of November, right before Thanksgiving.

Diesel inventories running on fumes

America’s diesel inventories are at their lowest level since the massive economic downturn caused by the 2008 Great Recession. Elaine Levin, president of Powerhouse, an energy risk management consultancy firm, noted that the diesel industry is “running on fumes.”

“That is a problem for everybody who needs to put it in the truck and burn it,” Levin said. She noted that if the supply of diesel decreases further, or does not improve beyond the EIA’s latest warning, prices will likely remain elevated throughout the winter.

The total distillate inventory figure for the U.S., which makes up roughly 85 to 90 percent of all diesel inventories, including other distillates such as heating oil, showed that the country has 106.78 million barrels left, up very slightly from the EIA’s report that showed 106.35 million barrels.

Levin noted that the figure for distillate inventories is uncomfortably close to the 100 million barrel mark. Once supplies hit this mark, it will start to create what Peters called “dislocations” in the fuel distribution system, as there won’t be enough to go around. It could lead to some places being prioritized for diesel deliveries over others.

As of Thursday, Nov. 3, the national average price per gallon of diesel was $5.311, or $1.672 higher than a year ago. Texas had the lowest average price at $4.715 per gallon, or $1.394 higher than a year ago, and California had the highest average state-level price at $6.3 per gallon, or $1.543 higher than a year ago.

Learn more about the diesel supply crisis at FuelSupply.news.

Watch Kate Dalley and Eric Peters discuss how the diesel fuel shortage is worsening America’s supply chain crisis.

This video is from the InfoWars channel on Brighteon.com.

A Crippling Shortage of Diesel Fuel Threatens to Devastate Western Economies in 2023

Michael Snyder — Mon, 31 Oct 2022 01:32:52 +0000

In my entire lifetime, global supplies of diesel fuel have never been tighter than they are right now. And that is really bad news, because the entire economy of the western world runs on diesel. If we suddenly had no more diesel fuel, virtually all of our trains, trucks and ships would stop running. Needless to say, just about everything that stocks our store shelves comes to us via trains, trucks and ships. So the fact that there is not enough diesel fuel to go around is a really big deal. Supplies have been declining for months, and at this point diesel inventories have fallen so low that we only have a 25 day buffer remaining…

The U.S. is facing a diesel crunch just as demand is surging ahead of winter — with only 25 days of supply left, according to the Energy Information Administration.

National Economic Council Director Brian Deese told Bloomberg TV that diesel inventories are “unacceptably low” and “all options are on the table” to bolster supply and reduce prices.

Unfortunately, this is not just a problem here in the United States.

Globally, supplies of diesel fuel have fallen to the lowest level that we have seen since 1982…

“The demand for diesel tends to rise as you get close to the winter, because the molecule that makes up diesel is very similar to the molecule that you use for heating homes in the U.S., for winter fuels in Europe,” Tom Kloza, dean of U.S. oil analysts at Oil Price Information Service (OPIS), told Newsweek.

The issue is global, said Kloza, adding that diesel inventories around the world are the lowest as they’ve been since 1982, “and we’ve added about 3.4 billion people in that time.”

Read that last line again.

The total population of the planet has nearly doubled since the early 1980s, and so we truly are in unprecedented territory.

Like I said earlier, I have never seen global supplies of diesel fuel any tighter than they are at this moment.

Of course that doesn’t mean that we are about to totally run out of diesel fuel.

But as supplies get tighter, we are likely to increasingly witness temporary shortages that have the potential to cause immense supply chain headaches…

A shortage of diesel fuel is spreading across the United States, with one company launching an emergency delivery protocol, requesting a 72-hour advance notice from clients to be able to make the delivery.

Per a Bloomberg report, fuel supplier Mansfield Energy wrote in a note to its clients that “conditions are rapidly devolving” and “At times, carriers are having to visit multiple terminals to find supply, which delays deliveries and strains local trucking capacity.”

In a desperate attempt to alleviate the pressure, two tankers that were loaded with diesel and jet fuel that were headed to Europe have been turned back around…

Meanwhile, the scarcity of diesel has prompted traders to start diverting cargoes with the fuel that were originally bound for Europe, Reuters reported earlier this month.

Tanker tracking data showed that at least two tankers with some 90,000 tons of diesel and jet fuel that were initially bound for Europe were diverted toward the U.S. East Coast.

That may help us a bit, but it is not good news at all for the Europeans.

In fact, some areas of Europe have already started to experience very serious shortages of diesel fuel.

Unfortunately, things are not likely to improve much any time soon.

In recent years, politicians in the United States and Europe have made life really difficult for refiners.

As a result, the number of refineries has actually been shrinking, and nobody has really wanted to build any new ones.

Now we get to experience the consequences of their very foolish policies.

At this point, we are being told that the only way to reduce demand for diesel is to have a “significant slowdown in freight movements and manufacturing activity”…

Stabilizing then rebuilding inventories to more comfortable levels will require a significant slowdown in freight movements and manufacturing activity.

There are early indications manufacturing and freight activity peaked in the third quarter of 2022. If confirmed that would take some of the pressure of distillate inventories.

But a deeper and more prolonged slowdown in the United States and/or in Europe and Asia will be needed to boost inventories significantly.

Rebalancing diesel supply will likely require a further rise in interest rates and tighter financial conditions in the United States and other major economies to reduce fuel consumption to more sustainable levels.

In other words, it is going to take a recession and/or a depression in order to fix this crisis.

Ouch.

We should have never allowed things to get this bad.

Over the past decade, we should have been building a lot more refining capacity.

But our politicians didn’t want that, and so now we all get to pay the price.

And thanks to the war in Ukraine, supplies from Russia that could help alleviate this nightmare are not going to be available.

So there will be shortages.

Also, it is likely that diesel prices will go a lot higher than they are right now.

Needless to say, that is going to add even more fuel to our ongoing inflation crisis, because just about everything that we buy has to be transported.

This is yet another reason why our standard of living is going to continue to go down at a frightening pace in the months ahead.

We truly have got a colossal mess on our hands, and it is going to be with us for quite some time to come.

***It is finally here! Michael’s new book entitled “7 Year Apocalypse” is now available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.***

About the Author: My name is Michael and my brand new book entitled “7 Year Apocalypse” is now available on Amazon.com. In addition to my new book I have written five other books that are available on Amazon.com including “Lost Prophecies Of The Future Of America”, “The Beginning Of The End”, “Get Prepared Now”, and “Living A Life That Really Matters”. (#CommissionsEarned) When you purchase any of these books you help to support the work that I am doing, and one way that you can really help is by sending digital copies as gifts through Amazon to family and friends. Time is short, and I need help getting these warnings into the hands of as many people as possible.

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Article cross-posted from The Economic Collapse Blog.

America’s Diesel Inventory Now Stands at LESS THAN ONE MONTH Thanks to Benedict Biden’s Disastrous Policies

Ethan Huff, Natural News — Sun, 23 Oct 2022 17:10:38 +0000

In just 25 days, the United States could potentially run out of diesel due to the Biden regime’s destructive energy policies.

There will probably be enough of it to last through the midterm election, of course – because Biden and the Democrats are desperate for a win. But after that, all bets appear to be off.

Right now, the fake “president” is draining America’s strategic emergency energy reserves in an attempt to hold back fuel inflation from going even higher than it already is. He is also promising to buy back oil “at some unknown point in the future,” one report explains, which may or may not happen.

In an attempt to buy more votes for his fellow political cronies, the Dementia King is desperately trying to cover up the fact that America’s energy future is dire. Supplies will dwindle as prices go straight up, it appears – but not until after the midterms. (Related: Back in the summer, diesel exhaust fluid (DEF) and diesel itself were not making it to Pilot Flying J fuel stations because of Union Pacific’s reduced rail shipments.)

The last time diesel supplies were this low was in 2008 before the market crash

Never before have America’s diesel supplies been as low as they currently are for this time of year. Official government data shows a major supply deficit that will soon unleash energy hell on America.

The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) says the country has just a 25-day supply of diesel fuel remaining – the lowest since 2008. Inventories hit a record low at the same time that the four-week rolling average of distillates supplied – a proxy figure for demand – rose to its highest seasonal level since 2007.

“In short, record low supply (courtesy of stifling regulations that have led to a historic shortage of refining capacity) meet record high demand,” reports Zero Hedge.

“What comes next is, well, ugly (while weekly demand dipped slightly in the latest week, it’s still at highest point in two years amid higher trucking, farming and heating use).”

As the Northern Hemisphere enters the cold winter season, these facts spell hell for not only the U.S. but North America and the rest of the industrialized world.

So many systems and economic sectors are intertwined on a global scale that the loss of diesel fuel here will create a domino effect all around the world. It truly does appear as though Biden’s promised dark winter is about to arrive.

“… such low levels are alarming because diesel is the workhorse of the global economy,” writes Javier Blas for Bloomberg.

“It powers trucks and vans, excavators, freight trains and ships. A shortage would mean higher costs for everything from trucking to farming to construction.”

National Economic Council Director Brian Deese added in a statement to Bloomberg TV that U.S. diesel inventories are “unacceptably low” and “all options are on the table” to increase supplies while reducing retail prices.

The Biden regime seems unconcerned about the matter, though. All it seems to care about is keeping the house of cards propped up until the election, after which all hell could break loose.

Other than draining the country’s strategic petroleum reserves (SPR) to create the illusion that things are good enough, the Biden regime is doing absolutely nothing to try to avoid this impending nightmare scenario, which is fast approaching.

American refineries, meanwhile, are raking in record-high diesel margins from all the chaos. The profits associated with turning a barrel of crude oil into one barrel of diesel hit a record high of $86.5 per barrel recently, up about 450 percent from the 2000-2020 average of $15.7 per barrel.

Is America on the verge of an energy (and economic) collapse? Learn more at Collapse.news.

Sources for this article include:

A Warning About the Coming Shortages of Diesel Fuel, Diesel Exhaust Fluid and Diesel Engine Oil

Michael Snyder — Thu, 23 Jun 2022 04:14:55 +0000

What I am about to share with you is a developing situation, and I hope to share more once the facts become clearer. It appears that a very serious diesel crisis is coming in the months ahead, and that will have a dramatic impact on our economy. As you will see below, we are being warned that there will be shortages of diesel fuel, diesel exhaust fluid and diesel engine oil. Most diesel vehicles require all three in order to run, and so a serious shortage of any of them would be a major disaster. Needless to say, simultaneous shortages of all three could potentially be catastrophic. Most Americans don’t spend much time thinking about diesel, but without it our supply chains collapse and we don’t have a functioning economy. In a recent Time Magazine article discussing the coming diesel fuel shortage, we are told that “the U.S. economy runs on diesel”…

Though most consumers shake their heads at the cost of gasoline and complain about the cost of filling up their car tanks, what they really should be worried about is the price of diesel. The U.S. economy runs on diesel. It’s what powers the container ships that bring goods from Asia and the trucks that collect goods from the ports and bring them to warehouses and then to your home. The farmers who grow the food you eat put diesel in their tractors to plow the fields, and the workers that bring construction equipment to build your home put diesel in their trucks.

Since January, supplies of diesel fuel have been steadily getting tighter.

As supplies have gotten tighter, prices have skyrocketed. The average price of a gallon of diesel fuel hit $5.50 a gallon in early May, and it has remained above that level ever since.

One of the biggest reasons for the supply crunch is a serious lack of refining capacity. Back in 1980, the U.S. had twice as many refineries…

There are also fewer refineries, which process crude oil into diesel and other products, in the U.S. than were just a few years ago. There are just 124 now operating, down from twice as many in 1980, and down from 139 in 2016, according to the U.S. Energy Information Association. The northeast region is particularly spare, with just seven refineries today, down from 27 in 1982.

There have already been some temporary outages of diesel fuel at a few locations around the country, and we are being warned that disruptions are likely to intensify during the summer months.

But the good news is that we aren’t going to run out of diesel fuel. It may become a lot more expensive, and there may be painful temporary shortages, but we won’t run out of it.

Unfortunately, the crisis that we are facing with diesel exhaust fluid is potentially much more serious.

If you have just been skimming this article, this is the part where you need to start really paying attention.

Newsweek is telling us that the United States “could soon experience a severe shortage of diesel exhaust fluid”…

The U.S. could soon experience a severe shortage of diesel exhaust fluid (DEF), impacting U.S. drivers already hit with soaring fuel prices.

DEF is a solution made up of urea and de-ionized water that is needed for almost everything that runs on diesel. It reduces harmful gases being released into the atmosphere and works by converting nitrogen oxide produced by diesel engines into nitrogen and steam.

If you have a diesel vehicle that was sold in the United States after 2010, your vehicle could technically run without DEF, but in most cases your vehicle will simply not let you start it if the DEF tank is dry…

Can we call it a DEF jam? Everything is in short supply as supply chains continue to unlink. The latest commodity reportedly hit is DEF, or the blue diesel exhaust fluid that every diesel sold in the U.S. after 2010 needs to cut emissions. This means that every diesel truck, diesel RV, SUV, and car owner will likely have to look harder, and pay more for, DEF. A diesel engine can technically run without DEF, but your diesel vehicle likely won’t let you start it if the DEF tank is empty.

A lack of urea is the biggest reason for the growing shortage of DEF.

The United States is one of the largest importers of urea in the world, and Russia and China are two of the largest exporters. In previous years that wasn’t a problem, but now the war in Ukraine has dramatically changed things…

A major portion of our urea comes from Europe, and because of the war in Ukraine we’re seeing a shortage of it, according to Newsweek. Russia is one of the world’s major exporters of it. China, too, is a major exporter of it, and it has suspended exports. Weather, too, has caused supply chain disruptions. Since it’s also a major component in fertilizers, there’s intense competition for urea.

Without enough DEF, our economy is going to be in for a world of hurt.

Meanwhile, Mike Adams is reporting on the growing shortages of diesel engine oil that are starting to happen all over the nation…

Retailers, customers and distributors are all reporting shortages in diesel engine oil. This is not an imaginary problem, it is a real problem that is so far entirely ignored by the corporate media.

Apparently there are some diesel engine oil additives that are in extremely short supply, and one industry insider is telling us that this problem isn’t going to be resolved any time soon.

So what this means is that people are going to start running out of diesel engine oil.

In fact, it is already being reported that the trains in Sri Lanka will soon have to completely shut down because of a lack of diesel engine oil…

Sri Lanka Railways said that it will NOT be possible to operate trains in the future due to the lack of engine oil. A senior official at Sri Lanka Railways said that the current level of engine oil would only last for another two months.

That’s in line with the warning we’re hearing in the states: About 8 weeks of diesel engine oil remaining in the pipeline.

Just solving one of the shortages that I have described in this article will not be enough.

As I noted in the opening paragraph, a diesel vehicle requires diesel fuel, diesel exhaust fluid and diesel engine oil in order to operate.

You need all three.

This is a story that I will be following very closely. Needless to say, there are enormous implications for our supply chains and for our economy as a whole if solutions cannot be found.

***It is finally here! Michael’s new book entitled “7 Year Apocalypse” is now available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.***

Image by RENE RAUSCHENBERGER from Pixabay. Article cross-posted from The Economic Collapse Blog.

Pennsylvania Farmers Are Unable to Harvest Their Crops Because of the Diesel Shortage

Lance D Johnson, Natural News — Fri, 17 Jun 2022 22:01:36 +0000

In two short years, America has gone from energy independence to an energy crisis. The average price of diesel is now $6.19 in Pennsylvania. Diesel prices are up 75 percent from one year ago. Farmers are struggling to obtain and/or afford diesel fuel and are therefore unable to get their crops out of the ground.

The Morning Call reports that Pennsylvania farmers are getting “crushed” by the record diesel prices, and the situation will most certainly affect food prices and bring about new food shortages in the coming months.

Farmers left stranded and broke, unable to harvest this year’s crop

A report from Lehigh County, Pennsylvania found a farmer completely stranded, unable to get diesel fuel and unable to operate his tractor. He cannot afford to harvest the corn he planted earlier in the year. The farmer reached out to Kyle Kotzmoyer, a legislative affairs specialist at the Pennsylvania Farm Bureau. Kotzmoyer testified to the state legislature on behalf of the farmers struggling to make ends meet. “We have reached that point to where it is very close to being a sinking ship. We are teetering on the edge right now,” Kotzmoyer told the legislature.

If farmers can’t pay to get the crops out of the ground, then the domestic US food supply will take another blow. On average, a farmer responsible for 3,500 acres will burn about 2,000 gallon of diesel every month. As the cost of farming doubles from just a year ago, many farmers may only be able to harvest a little over half of what they once produced. Many may sell their corn and bean seeds back so they can harvest hay, which has a better return on investment.

Build back better communism is punishing and impoverishing the producers

The 10 – 30 percent increase in food prices recorded in early 2022 are just an appetizer for what is to come. Americans are spending nearly $300 more a month for food and fuel than they were a year ago. Kotzmoyer warned the legislature that food shortages are only going to get worse, simply because “one, if they can’t afford to put it in the ground. Or, two, if they can’t afford to take it out,” he said.

Is a modern day holodomor taking shape and form? Will individually-owned and operated farms soon be replaced with state-run collectives? Will grocery stores bring back item limits? Will the current occupiers of the White House “inflict death” through “starvation” just to push forth their communist agenda?

The Biden regime’s “build back better” agenda continues to threaten domestic oil drilling and domestic energy supply, as a communistic ‘green new deal’ is forced into existence. Americans are being forced to ration energy and food as these disastrous policies hold. Meanwhile, there is no real-world plan to peacefully and constructively transition Americans to this glorified “carbon zero future” that the Democrats obsess over. As Americans are starved and impoverished by historic inflation, the producers across the nation continue to be threatened and punished for their hard work.

This ‘build back better’ agenda is modeled off of the World Economic Forum’s communist “Great Reset” agenda. These policies are designed to destroy American independence and control the population. There’s no denying that the destruction of American energy, the world reserve currency, and the food supply is all part of a PLANNED global takeover. Many people still cluelessly and/or spinelessly go along with this diabolical agenda, having proved their allegiance to this new world order over the past two years by staying home, shutting down, accepting government dependence, donning masks and clinging to vaccine passports.

Sources include: