On paper, the United States should be the world’s safety valve in this fuel crisis. American refineries make far more diesel than Americans burn. But every one of those barrels is already spoken for. Between rising domestic demand, heavy export commitments and refineries running near their limit, the U.S. is drawing down its own stocks, not sitting on a surplus. And as Karl W. Miller shows in his latest assessment, dated September 29, the shock from the Gulf hits the world’s fuel supply twice: it starves refineries abroad of crude and removes finished fuel from the Gulf’s own refineries. America has no spare diesel to offer a world that has lost 1.6 million barrels a day of diesel exports from the Gulf and Russia combined. Until finished-fuel supply recovers, the gap will be closed by higher prices, less economic activity, or both.
Geopolitics
The Electronic Intifada: Settler violence is state violence in the West Bank
Jewish settler violence in the occupied West Bank tipped over the edge in a bloody incident last week, leaving four Palestinians and two Israelis killed. But the trend obscures a broader objective which is being […]
EU politics
Spain in English: Violations of ‘presumption of innocence’ in Catalan Trial
The interesting aspect of this farce of a trial is that if found guilty, it will probably end up at the European Court of Justice and will expose the EU´s failure to deal with this […]
Deregulation
Aditya Chakrabortty: The fat cats have got their claws into our universities, and will eat them up
In neo-liberalism everything is a commodity, there to be exploited by the “New Meritocracy” of business people. In the UK they are now plundering what were once true bastions of meritocracy: universities. Read here
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