03.12.26

Petrocalypse

Today the International Energy Agency reports:

The war in the Middle East is creating the largest supply disruption in the history of the global oil market.

From 20 billion barrels a day, oil passing through the Strait of Hormuz has been reduced to “a trickle.” This morning, the benchmark price hit $100 a barrel, according to the AP, and stocks are sinking worldwide, “with no clear end in sight for Iran War.”

Agriculture, heating and cooling, transportation, manufacturing, and communication all depend on petroleum. Without petroleum, economies collapse.

Gas in the U.S. is 60 cents more expensive than two weeks ago: $3.50 a gallon, on average. As stocks of petroleum-based fertilizers dwindle, a “global food crisis” threatens, according to the Carnegie Endowment. Airlines are canceling flights as diesel prices skyrocket. Plastics are made of petroleum too — that means everything from disposable diapers to medical syringes, automobile bumpers to mobile phones.

Meanwhile, the U.S. and Israel are poisoning Iran—and Iranians—with oil.

Tehran’s residents are struggling to breathe after airstrikes took out a fuel depot in a residential neighborhood last week. Reports DropSite News:

A colossal orange flash ignited on the horizon. . . . The massive reservoirs of combustible fuel triggered apocalyptic-looking fires that raged throughout the night.

A 44-year-old engineer told TIME:

‘The rain is black, I can’t believe it, I’m seeing black rain.’

A woman who had been through the 2020 earthquake said it was worse than that. From DropSite:

When [she and her sister] returned to their apartment to pack, some nine hours after taking their mother to hospital, they found it blackened from the oil fires raging nearby. . . .

For two grueling hours, [they] scrubbed surfaces and wiped down appliances. Wet rags became instantly soaked with heavy, black sludge as they tried to clean the thick, greasy layer of airborne crude. . . . ‘By the time we finally packed our bags and locked the door, our fingernails were caked in chemical grime, and our lungs were burning just from breathing inside our own living room.’

Trump said yesterday that he knew oil prices would go up because of his “excursion” in Iran — “a very positive thing” — and that the surge is “artificial.” It is not. Nations in the Gulf have stopped production because they have nowhere to put the oil that’s not getting out of the region. Emergency stockpiles are being tapped, but stockpiles run out.

On Truth Social, the president spun all this as good news:

The United States is the largest Oil Producer in the World, by far, so when oil prices go up, we make a lot of money.