Tag: oil

‘Survival Mode’ – Farmers Crushed As Trump’s War On Iran Sends Diesel Cost Soaring

As Donald Trump’s war on Iran nears the seven-month mark, the economic damage is reverberating all over the world, and all across the United States. Among the Americans who are feeling the most pain from a war their federal legislators never declared are the nation’s farmers, who are growing increasingly desperate under the weight of rising costs for diesel, fertilizer and equipment.

It’s a demographic that leans hard to the right, but now feels let down by Trump and others in Washington. “It’s his war that caused this, this war in Iran. We’re not winning that war. And many farmers feel like we shouldn’t be there,” farmer John Boyd, Jr told CNN. Trump says the war in Iran is necessary to prevent the country from building a nuclear weapon. However, going back to 2007 and up to the eve of the war, the US intelligence committee has repeatedly assessed that Iran was not building one. 

“I’ve done this 34 years. I have never worried and stressed like I have the last year,” North Carolina farmer Matt Bell told CBS News. “We’ve cut everything we can cut.” Trying every option he can think of to improve his cash flow, Bell has put off replacing equipment, produced some of his own fertilizer, and opened a pumpkin patch and hayride business for the fall. The rising costs come after a difficult period had already weakened his operation’s financial security. 

“The last several years in agriculture have been terrible, and we have just cut the fat anywhere we could. But we’re just getting to the point now there’s nothing left to cut. You cannot run without fuel. You cannot run without fertilizer. You have to have that,” Bell said. 

As a result of a major reduction in oil exports from the Persian Gulf, the nationwide average cost for a gallon of diesel hit $6.49 this week, up 75% from a year ago, according to the AAA. Lately, the price volatility has led Bell’s diesel distributors to offer price quotations that are only good for a matter of hours. He’d budgeted $35,000 for fuel in 2026, but blew past that number in August. “Every piece of equipment on this farm runs on diesel,” he emphasized. 

In an interview with Sky News, Texas cattle rancher Lynn Fleming said her August outlay for few was almost double what she’d paid in recent years. “Obviously the main [factor] is what we’re facing everyday with the Iranian situation,” Fleming said. Her husband, Robert, said he felt blindsided by the war. “We had no idea that he was going to pull the prank with the Strait of Hormuz. He didn’t tell us … he was going to go do the military maneuvers and try to control the oil supply over there. We had no warning of what was going to happen.” A major cornerstone of Trump’s 2024 campaign was his pledge to be a “peace president” who would refrain from starting any new wars.    

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As Gas Prices Soar, Congress Goes Home

Instead of six more weeks of winter, we will have at least six more weeks of war, brought to us by Secretary Hegseth and his boss, President Trump, with the help of Speaker Johnson who avoided a procedural vote, taking it upon himself to adjourn, under the Rule 1, Clause 13, of the House of Representatives.

Consider. The Administration, compelled by Israeli interests, has driven America into a war of choice against a nation that represented no threat to our country. The war against Iran is becoming more dangerous every day, more casualties, more expense, and more devastating economic and moral consequences.

On September 15, the House of Representatives expressed its constitutional will and voted 220–204 to direct the President to end American participation in the war against Iran.

This constitutional crisis extends beyond one resolution or one cabinet secretary. The House exists as an independent branch of government, with its own authority over war, appropriations and impeachment.

The Speaker, by preventing a recorded vote on the Hegseth Impeachment and sending members home, prevented the House from exercising one of its most consequential checks on executive power. The practical effect was to protect the Administration from an immediate confrontation with a chamber that had voted to end the war.

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America Is Making More Diesel Than It Has Since 2019. It Still Costs a Record $6.29.

The most useful number inside this week’s record diesel prices is not $6.29. It is $1.97 — the gap between a gallon of on-highway diesel and a gallon of regular gasoline. Sit with that one, because it is the whole story.

Diesel holds roughly 14% more energy per gallon than gasoline — 137,381 Btu against 120,166 Btu, using the Energy Information Administration’s own 2026 conversion figures. It currently costs 45.5% more to buy. Every argument ever made for paying extra for a compression-ignition engine was built on the first number. The pump is being priced off the second.

Record diesel prices are not, whatever your instinct says, a story about a crude oil shortage. The United States is on track to produce more crude this year than in any year in its history. American refiners are making more diesel than they have since 2019. The fuel set a nominal record anyway. Understanding why means looking past the barrel and at the machinery that cuts it apart.

The number that broke the record

The EIA’s weekly survey put the national average on-highway diesel price at $6.285 per gallon on Monday, September 14. The agency says that is the highest figure in nominal terms since the series began in 1994, and the highest in inflation-adjusted terms since 2022. We flagged the moment diesel first pushed past $6 earlier this month.

The velocity is the part that should worry people. Diesel climbed 31.8 cents in a single week. In the Lower Atlantic it jumped 49.1 cents in seven days. Year over year, diesel is up roughly 68%. Regular gasoline over the same twelve months is up roughly 36%. West Coast diesel averages $7.250 a gallon. California averages $8.039.

Two fuels, one barrel, wildly different trajectories. That divergence is the clue.

American refineries are already running flat out

Here is the fact that reframes everything. U.S. distillate production averaged 5.1 million barrels per day from January through August, the most since 2019, and refineries ran at 97% utilization in the week ending September 11. There is no idle capacity waiting to be switched on. The industry is not holding back. It is redlined.

What changed is where the diesel goes. Refining activity has fallen in Russia, China and the Middle East, leaving the rest of the world short of middle distillate and bidding for America’s. U.S. net distillate exports have sat near or above the 2021–2025 high since February. Inventories, which normally build through summer, went sideways instead. By September 11 they were 15.8 million barrels, or 13%, below the five-year seasonal average.

The United States is not running out of diesel. It is selling diesel to people willing to outbid you for it.

That shows up in the crack spread, the rough measure of what a refiner earns turning crude into product. The EIA’s September Short-Term Energy Outlook raised its 2026 distillate crack spread forecast to $1.57 a gallon, up 20.8% from the previous month’s estimate, and lifted the 2027 figure to $1.25. Refiners are not the villains of this story. They are unambiguously the beneficiaries.

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Ukraine Pounds Major Moscow Refinery As Global Diesel Crisis Threatens Economic Shock

Military conflicts, economic wars, and resource wars are converging ahead of the Northern Hemisphere winter.

Export restrictions on critical materials and energy products are adding economic pressure worldwide, raising the risk that supply disruptions and retaliatory measures widen existing conflicts. With no clear path to de-escalation, the potential for spillover from active war zones remains top of mind.

The most pressing news so far this morning is that Ukraine launched a major overnight drone strike on Russia, hitting a Moscow refinery despite President Trump’s request for Ukraine to stop striking Russian energy infrastructure as a global refining crisis deepens.

Bloomberg reports that the Gazprom Neft-owned Moscow Oil Refinery, about 16 miles from the Kremlin, was struck by drones. The facility has a processing capacity of around 245,000 barrels a day and supplies fuel to the surrounding metro area.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy wrote on X, “One of Russia’s key oil industry facilities and the aggressor’s logistics facility were hit. These are billions of dollars that sustain the war machine. The systems used included FP-1, RZ-100, MICH-2000, Palianytsia, Vendetta, Liutyi, Bars, Flamingo, Sichen, and Pelican.”

Last week, diesel futures and refining spreads climbed to record highs as worsening supply disruptions in the Gulf and Russia tightened availability of the industrial fuel that powers the global economy.

Potential export restrictions, or extensions of existing restrictions, are compounding the squeeze. A report on Tuesday said Moscow was considering extending its diesel export ban, while Senate Majority Leader John Thune told reporters that day he was “open to exploring” a US diesel export ban.

The squeeze was even more severe in refining spreads. The US heating oil crack, which measures the difference between fuel and crude prices, surged to $117 a barrel on Wednesday, the highest level in Bloomberg data going back to 2009.

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Cuba Hit With National Power Grid Collapse As Oil Sources Dry Up

Cuba’s power grid collapsed once again this week, this time at a national level, leaving millions of people across the island without electricity.  This is the sixth time since the US cut off fuel sources to the island since January that the national grid has collapsed and it’s the most utility shutdown events in the country’s recent history.  

Even when Cuba’s grid is in operation, only 30% of the population at most receives electricity at any given time.  Many regions stay dark 20 to 30 hours at a stretch. Some provinces have reported 60–90 hours without power. Havana has gone from 4 hours a day early in the year to 18 hours after the fuel cutoff. 

“Protocols are now in place to begin ​the gradual restoration of the system,” said Felix Estrada, an ⁠official with Cuba’s National Electrical Union (UNE). Power had returned to a handful of ​scattered neighborhoods in Havana by late evening, primarily around hospitals, but much of ​the city remained completely dark.

Many exhausted residents ​of the capital Havana were already without power when the national blackout hit.

“Yesterday I’d gone without ‌power ⁠for 24 hours. They turned the lights on for an hour, and then the grid collapsed,” said Frank Lorenzo, a 23-year-old Havana resident.

Around 61% of Cuba’s oil was sourced from Venezuela until the US capture of illegitimate president Nicolas Maduro.  Shipments from Mexico have were also scaled back and then cut off.  Russia has sent only one tanker so far this year. 

Reports of a “shadow fleet” of tankers carrying Iranian oil to Cuba have circulated since at least 2020.  Investigations of the seized tanker “Skipper” in 2025 found it had previously carried Iranian oil to Syria and China, then later moved Venezuelan oil on a route tied to Cuba. It confirmed the existence of overlapping Iran–Venezuela–Cuba shipping networks. 

The US blockade of the Strait of Hormuz has proven incredibly effective in shutting down Iranian oil exports, leaving Iran’s clandestine trade partners high and dry.  

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Six Days After Ukraine Agrees to Halt Attacks on Russian Refineries – They Strike Kapotnya Refinery in Moscow, to Screw Russia Global Energy Markets, AND Trump!

America’s enemies are working against President Donald Trump. They want him gravely damaged before the midterm elections in five weeks.

On September 14, 2026, President Donald Trump posted on Truth Social that Ukraine had agreed to halt attacks on Russian energy targets:

Ukraine has agreed not to hit Russian Energy targets.
Russia has agreed to do, likewise!
The World’s Diesel price rise is mostly caused by the Russia/Ukraine War, not Iran.
President DJT

This post on TRUTH Social followed Trump’s comments the day before in Ireland, where he publicly urged Ukraine to stop striking Russian diesel refineries, saying those attacks were contributing to a global diesel shortage.

But Ukraine lied.
Ukrainian leader Zelensky always lies.

On Sunday morning Ukraine bombed the the Kapotnya Oil Refinery in Moscow.

The refinery is in Moscow’s southeastern Kapotnya district, about 12–15 km from the Kremlin. It is one of Russia’s 10 largest refineries and the primary fuel source for the capital region.

Of course, not only did they lie but the Ukrainians ordered this strike just weeks before the midterm election.
What great friends!

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The Crippling Effects of Unnecessary War

In California, gas stations are facing a unique challenge. The station signs are only configured to go up to $9.99 per gallon and at several stations the price of diesel has reached that maximum. Diesel prices are higher than they have ever been in history.

Worse, according to some news reports the advertising of the maximum price of $9.99 per gallon is meant to signal to truck drivers that they have run out of diesel altogether. Expensive diesel is a hit to the economy, but running out of the fuel at any price is a whole different kind of crisis.

Our highways are filled with semi-trucks burning diesel to bring the products we depend on to the markets. Our freight trains use diesel to transport what is not transported by truck. When the price of diesel increases, the cost of everything moved by that diesel also increases. This is one reason we are seeing much more inflation than the government wants to admit.

The diesel crisis is getting so serious that even President Trump has been forced to admit it. Of course, instead of taking at least part of the blame over his war of choice against Iran and his continuation of the proxy war against Russia through Ukraine, he is blaming Ukraine’s military strikes on Russian energy infrastructure.

President Trump is now asking Ukraine to stop attacking Russian energy resources because diesel is a global commodity and the scarcity produced by the attacks is hitting us here at home. But the strikes deep inside Russia are guided by US intelligence, which provides the targeting data for Ukraine.

The Russia/Ukraine war is only part of the problem. Despite President Trump’s bluster about controlling the Strait of Hormuz, the fact is Iran is in control and very little oil – or anything else – makes it out without Iranian approval.

Yemen’s Iran-allied Houthis joining the fight only makes matters worse. Over the weekend they attacked Saudi Arabia’s bypass pipeline, taking much more oil off the market.

The real problem here is not oil or diesel. The real problem is that wars of choice spin out of control and destroy the economies of those who launch them. Empires throughout history have been undone by endless overseas wars. No amount of bragging about the size and strength of our military can change this reality.

Now we are seeing the chickens coming home to roost.

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Energy Truce In Shambles: Ukraine Strikes Russian Refinery Despite Trump’s Warning Amid Global Diesel Crisis

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on X that Ukrainian forces struck the Syzran refinery in Russia’s Samara region, about 75 miles west of Samara and 466 miles southeast of Moscow. The strike comes days after President Trump urged Ukraine to halt attacks on Russian refineries, as average US retail diesel prices jumped above $6 a gallon and alarming disruptions to global refining capacity threaten fuel supplies ahead of the Northern Hemisphere winter. 

Zelenskyy wrote on X: 

Russia continues to attack our energy sector, regular logistics, and critical infrastructure. And our responses to them for this are tangible. There are new results from the Defense Forces of Ukraine regarding the refinery in Syzran. There was also a strike in Taganrog on a drone production facility, as well as on a drone preparation and launch site in the Oryol region. Targets were hit in the Black Sea as well. I thank every one of our warriors for the effectiveness of our long-range sanctions!

The day before, the United States also announced a significant decision regarding Russia’s VTB Bank – one of Russia’s systemic banks, which is heavily involved in schemes supporting Russia’s war and, in particular, its relations with the Iranian regime. All such schemes that work against peace truly need to be dismantled. I thank our partners for this useful step!

There is no alternative to ending this war. And all forms of pressure on Russia must create the right diplomatic conditions. Glory to Ukraine!

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HUGE BLOW TO HOCHUL: Obama-Appointed Federal Judge Strikes Down New York’s $75B “Superfund” Climate Law Fining Fossil Fuel Companies

New York Democrats’ scheme to extract a staggering $75 billion from energy producers has been struck down by a federal judge.

Chief U.S. District Judge Brenda K. Sannes, an Obama appointee, ruled that New York’s so-called Climate Change Superfund Act was preempted by federal law and could not be enforced.

The sweeping law, signed by Democrat Governor Kathy Hochul in December 2024, sought to force oil, natural gas, and coal companies to pay $3 billion annually for 25 years into a state-controlled climate fund.

“With nearly every record rainfall, heatwave, and coastal storm, New Yorkers are increasingly burdened with billions of dollars in health, safety, and environmental consequences due to polluters that have historically harmed our environment,” Governor Hochul said.

“Establishing the Climate Superfund is the latest example of my administration taking action to hold polluters responsible for the damage done to our environment and requiring major investments in infrastructure and other projects critical to protecting our communities and economy,” she added.

Under the law, companies determined by New York regulators to be responsible for more than one billion tons of greenhouse-gas emissions between 2000 and 2024 would have faced strict liability, regardless of whether they violated any law.

The scheme was not limited to activity inside New York. It attempted to calculate emissions connected to fossil-fuel extraction and refining around the world and then send massive “cost recovery demands” to the targeted companies.

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Norway Rejects Climate Orthodoxy’s False Choice, Builds Wealth

Norway’s Minister of Energy Terje Aasland told Reuters that his country will keep developing oil and gas in the Barents Sea irrespective of a European Union (EU) ban on Arctic drilling.

“In today’s geopolitical and security environment… I believe continued activity in the Barents Sea serves both Norwegian and European interests,” said Aasland.

Although not an EU member, Norway is a close ally and Europe’s largest gas supplier, meeting about 30% of the demand across the European Union and Britain. Last year Norwegian gas output ran near record levels, and oil production hit its highest mark since 2009. 

Without new fields, however, official projections show output dropping sharply after 2030. But Aasland intends to hold production and exports near current levels until at least 2035, and he has said that the Arctic is important to Norway remaining a long-term supplier.

The EU currently backs a ban on new Arctic drilling on environmental grounds, while buying the gas that keeps its factories running. Anders Opedal, CEO of Norwegian multinational energy company Equinor, has said that producers of Barents oil and natural gas will find buyers somewhere else if Europe refuses to buy. 

Even Fatih Birol, head of the International Energy Agency (IEA) and a promoter of transitioning away from fossil fuels, has urged the EU to reconsider its opposition to Arctic development for the sake of energy security.

Europe has already suffered economic damage from its “green” pretense. The IEA reports that EU electricity prices for energy-intensive industry averaged more than double American levels in 2025 and were nearly 50% above China’s. A 2024 report on European competitiveness warned that such costs are hollowing out manufacturing.

Here is where the story stops being about the Arctic and becomes about everyone else.

Norway is not a struggling petro-state rationalizing a bad habit. It is among the richest societies ever built, with per capita gross domestic product above $105,000 and a sovereign wealth fund that crossed $2.39 trillion in June. Five and a half million people have converted seabed hydrocarbons into universal healthcare, free universities, and pensions for grandchildren not yet born.

If Norway considers oil and gas indispensable to its economic position, it is unreasonable to demand that poorer countries abandon their own resources. This matters enormously for Africa, South Asia, and other rapidly developing regions. For many African households, unreliable energy can be catastrophic.

Delay of fossil fuel projects costs in ways spreadsheets miss. A gas project blocked by climate posturing means that engineering teams disband, drilling rigs go elsewhere, borrowing costs rise, and the fertilizer plant that would have used the hydrocarbon feedstock never gets built. A decade of compounding benefits is lost to a national balance sheet.

Western proponents of climate orthodoxy declare immoral the ladder their societies climbed to unprecedented prosperity. Every advanced economy industrialized with coal, oil, and gas. Norway is still doing it with a $2 trillion cushion. Norwegian leaders recognize oil and gas are critical to their nation’s future, unlike their counterparts in the EU, Canada, and Australia.

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