Full screen recommended.
"Energy Supply Shortages Threatens To Trigger
Supply Chain Collapse And Push Prices To Skyrocket"
by Epic Economist
"We’re in the middle of the worst energy supply shortage the world has ever seen in over five decades. Everything you can imagine - from oil to diesel to jet fuel to natural gas – is in short supply right now. In fact, we’re being told that U.S. fuel reserves have hit dangerously low levels, and this is threatening to bring our already stressed supply chains to a halt as truck drivers struggle to bear the brunt of soaring fuel costs. On top of all that, even the nation’s electricity generation capacity is declining sharply, and power grid regulators are warning that extreme weather is likely to trigger rolling blackouts this summer which could result in widespread business shutdowns and potential water shortages.
In the United States, perilously low inventories of oil products and a shortage of refining capacity have laid the foundations for an oil shortage crisis in the country this summer. At this point, there isn't anything authorities can do to reverse this situation, as highlighted by Paul Sankey, Lead Analyst at Sankey Research, referring to the fact that a refinery cannot be built in time to ease the gasoline and diesel crunch. Since the onset of the health crisis, over 1 million barrels per day of refinery capacity in America has been shut permanently.The surge in consumer demand since economies reopened and people returned to travel, in addition to lower refining capacity and extremely tight distillate markets have pushed down U.S. fuel inventories to below seasonal averages and at multi-year lows, with record-low inventories reported on the East Coast.
The situation is worrying everyone in the industry – from executives to truckers – everybody is now fearing the devastating effects a fuel shortage can have on the economy in the months ahead. “I’ve seen fuel prices when I started out, a dollar something a gallon and we were squalling even back then. Now 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 dollars a gallon, it’s ludicrous, it’s out of hand, it’s going to drive the trucking industry out,” lamented Bart Costi, who has been a truck driver for decades. This massive shortage of fuels can cripple our already fragile supply chain. "If we don't have diesel, then we can't run," outlines Louis Campion, president and CEO of the Maryland Motor Truck Association. Even the U.S. Oil and Gas Association President Tim Stewart is alarmed about the situation. During an interview, Stewart said the U.S. is in the most challenging energy crisis in the last 50 years and the federal government has "no strategy" whatsoever to help the country get out of record-high gasoline and diesel prices.
At the same time, millions of Americans will be facing electricity shortages in the coming months as extreme weather overwhelms our aging power grid. The regulating authority that oversees the health of the nation’s electrical infrastructure released an alarming report about the dire state of the US power grid going into the summer. In its 2022 Summer Reliability Assessment, the North American Electric Reliability Corporation, or NERC, pointed out that ongoing drought in several parts of the nation and heatwaves “could require system operators to use emergency procedures, up to and including temporary manual load shedding,” - also known as rolling blackouts.
The problem is that energy supplies are so fragile that there just won't be enough to go around, and power cuts will put lives at risk when heatwaves hits and there are no fans or air conditioners to provide relief from searing temperatures. Without power, the well-being of our population is going to be disrupted. Prolonged outages could also mean that tens of thousands of Americans are at risk of losing access to clean water, the economist added.
If blackouts persist, businesses can face mass shutdowns again, which will consequently bring a huge economic shock. But energy is not just a part of the economy. In a real, physical sense it is the economy. Energy is essential for everything we do. This means that an energy crisis can quickly become an everything crisis. And now, another disaster is looming. But unfortunately, very few Americans have any idea of just how profound the current energy crisis already is, and is about to become."
No comments:
Post a Comment