Almost 9% of the world’s oil refining capacity has been taken offline due to the conflicts in Iran and Ukraine. Due to all product categories relying on energy for production and distribution, increasing energy prices increase the prices of all product categories.
“The Iran war has not only slashed energy supply by disrupting tanker traffic out of the Gulf, but marks the biggest hit to refining since the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, with damage to facilities and crude shortages forcing cuts in processing,” Reuters said Wednesday.
Brent crude reached an all-time high in April at $126 a barrel. Jet fuel and diesel prices have been hardest hit by the reduction of refining capacity.
In early May Ukraine continued its ongoing attack against Russian oil infrastructure. Over the last several weeks Kiev struck 15 energy infrastructure sites, which Reuters compiled a list of in an article Wednesday.
The U.S. domestic oil refinery industry, which is increasingly refining U.S.-sourced crude into commercial-grades of fuel, has taken a hit recently too.
“A heater on a reformer at PBF Energy’s 190,000 barrel-per-day Chalmette, Louisiana refinery exploded on Friday, setting off a fire, said two people familiar with plant operations,” Reuters said Friday.
Experts say the economic effects compound with time and there is no path to an instant recovery from the current situation.
“Even if the war was to end quickly, prices are expected to remain at high levels,” TotalEnergies CEO Patrick Pouyanne said on April 29.
On May 6 talkshow host Mike Adams issued a video report about what he is calling the “Oil Emergency of 2026 – 2027.” He discussed how, due to government subsidies, oil is currently massively undervalued. The price could skyrocket by the end of the year, Adams said.
“We’re facing an economic superstorm that we have never experienced before,” Adams said.
Adams explained how the current destruction of energy infrastructure will have lasting effects as the damage that has been done cannot be quickly repaired. He mentioned how the closure of the Strait of Hormuz near Iran has resulted in about an 80 to 90% cut in oil exports from the gulf region.
Since Operation Midnight Hammer in June 2025 Alex Jones has been warning that if President Donald Trump gets into a war with Iran the economy would tank due to energy prices getting rocked by the closure of the Strait of Hormuz.
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….As of January 1, 2024, there were 132 operable petroleum refineries in the United States.
The newest refinery in the United States is the Texas International Terminals 45,000 b/cd refinery in Galveston, Texas, which started operating in February 2022.
However, the newest refinery with significant downstream unit capacity is Marathon’s facility in Garyville, Louisiana. That facility came online in 1977 …
Suddenly the “green energy scam” isn’t looking so bad, is it ?
What Trump and his billionaire friends in the oil industry have always tried to conceal from their MAGA thralls is the reality that ENERGY IS ONLY ABOUT COST, and beyond that it’s all the same and consumers are totally agnostic to its source.
Green-energy visionaries foresaw how true energy independence would come NOT from total reliance on a handful of massive energy companies to exclusively supply the entire market, but rather allowing any entity, be it an individual, a business, or a community to participate in a rich market and provide for its own inexpensive, reliable energy with myriad technologies that can take advantage of naturally renewable resources.
Those with a stake in the status quo like Trump foresaw the rapidly falling cost of green energy as a threat to their hegemonic entitlement to obscene oil-based wealth and declared war, not merely on windmills and solar panels, but also affordable energy in the future for ordinary Americans.
You know Trump is crying crocodile tears over a couple dead birds beneath a windmill when he’s perfectly fine with wiping dozens of species off the face of the Earth altogether in his pursuit of clear-cutting environmental regulation.
Good luck with that “refining capacity”, coal-rolling MAGAs – sensible people who benefit from their respect for science will be waiting to sell you solar panels at a premium when that inevitably goes to sh!t.