"Record Fuel Prices Blast Off
in US Right on Schedule!"
by David Haggith
"Welcome to the summer arrival, as promised, of the most expensive gasoline prices ever seen in the US at this time of year. One has to compare apples to apples, in terms of seasonality, so … Gasoline prices climbed on Wednesday, marking their highest level on record for this time of year. The national average [at $4.03/gal] “is now at its highest ever level this late in the calendar year,” GasBuddy head of petroleum research Patrick De Haan noted on X, “meaning the national average has never been above $4/gal after Aug. 12 in any previous year- ever.”
So, I guess the arrival I promised of soaring fuel prices this summer, to hit shortly after our fuel and oil reserves effectively bottomed out, wasn’t really off at all. There is still lots of summer left, and prices suddenly bounced up to the highest ever seen for this time in the summer. I’m not sure how one can hit it more accurately than that, though I had conceded it felt like it was dragging on a tiny bit longer than I originally thought, but what is a couple of weeks in the grand scope of the highest prices “ever”?
I did warn, too, about how suddenly this could happen in a recent Deeper Dive for paying subscribers: "The safety net keeping oil prices from spiking is nearly gone, and one analyst warns that when it runs out, the move could be sudden and severe…The move … may be less gradual than I suggested; therefore, arrive with a little more delay, but be more sudden and severe when it arrives."
And, yet, we have not begun to see the worst of it, even though prices suddenly spiked to the worst they’ve ever been for this part of summer … or, for that matter, for the remaining part of the year. We haven’t begun to see the worst of it because we have not begun to see actual shortages hit gas stations in this country. We are seeing prices rise as shortages appear in other countries, as I said earlier this week we would experience as a spill-over effect because we are pumping as much fuel toward those countries as our refineries can manage, and those countries are bidding up the price of fuel. So, that didn’t take long either. And we are seeing it happen, even without crude oil prices going back up that much … yet … as I also explained was possible when shortages in fuels start to appear due to refinery destruction outpacing crude destruction.
And we are seeing more continuing refinery destruction as I said we would … even in today’s news: (And, as said, the soaring prices are not just in gasoline, reported above, but in diesel, the fuel that delivers the rest of the economy to our doorsteps.)
Refinery Attacks Deepen Global Diesel Supply Crunch: Diesel prices are surging as Ukrainian attacks on Russian refineries and Houthi attacks on Saudi energy infrastructure are deepening an already severe global fuel shortage. U.S. diesel futures jumped 7.4% this week, while retail prices reached $5.32 per gallon.
All of this is also why I said yesterday to discount this month’s inflation reports, which include the Producer Price Index that came in today (see headlines below) because its soft spot is for the same reason we saw in yesterday’s CPI report—FUEL prices and other energy prices fell while most other prices rose, and that, as I have been saying, was purely temporary due to Trump’s blabbergassing about Iran being desperate to make a deal—a charade that might still work with the bidding bots in oil futures, but that can’t do anything with the price increases that actually count—the rising price of fuel at the pumps for everyone, including businesses and airlines. Those are going to keep rising because the war is going to stay hot and destructive, maybe even more destructive. And they push up the priced of everything over time.
No good comes out of an environment of deep corruption
Of course, we have a twisted story today where the completely inane Treasury Secretary, Scott Bessent, tells more public lies, by repeating Donald Trump, saying that the US now controls the strait. That’s so laughable it isn’t funny. It is a marvel that they are so brazen as to make claims so readily provable as completely false: If the strait is “completely controlled” by the US, why doesn’t Trump just open it up completely … today? If the strait is completely controlled by the US, that means the strait’s continued closure has to be entirely Donald Trump’s fault because he’s the one in control of the strait. So, open up or shut up, Donny Boy!
It is mind boggling that the Trump administration thinks ANYONE will believe such obvious lies when they are so clearly contradicted by reality that everyone can see, However it is mind blowing that so many still don’t see it and keep believing and supporting the Liar-in-Chief. Support the guy who lies to you in the most obvious ways every single day even as you watch his personal profits off the war soar (also in the headlines below today) beyond any profits any president in history has ever made off of any decisions while in office.
Watch him amass a fortune while he takes down your living with higher costs due to his war, and then praise him as the best president ever! Do this while he makes decisions that kill people and destroy the global economy. So, the Demonrats (oh, the audacity of their Trump-hating ways) are finally going after him for the worst insider trading in White House history.
The most obscene part of this insider trading is that it works by flashing war on and off and betting on the changes those moves will bring to markets just before you announce the decision. The bets have been so blatantly obvious and reported here a number of times that even the sleepy Democrats in congress are finally ginning up a political war over it, getting excited, I guess, that they may win congress entirely this fall so that they can actually go somewhere with this.
Well, they could, except, of course, our brilliant, supposedly conservative Supreme Court has ruled the president can do anything he wants so long as it is an official decision, and what could be more official than presidential decisions to TACO in and out of war on a daily basis? This is what you get when you give absolute power to someone who cravenly craves it. The Dems can impeach him, but they probably cannot bring any criminal charges against him. Meanwhile the Republicans who were enraged at Hunter & Dad are completely benign about the president declaring war (supposedly congress’s constitutionally reserved and mandated power) for insider trading and massive profiteering, and they even provide him cover! Politics in the US has never been more obscene.
In that corrupt environment where the flash-on/flash-off war has been hugely profitable for the president, the war will continue; and Iran promises in the headlines below that it is going to get much more aggressive in bringing the war home to the US. (So, no, fuel prices are not going to see any reprieve, and that means the soft inflation data is, as stated, meaningless because it all rises when energy goes back on the rise, which is what is being reported here today. It’s on the rise!)
Iran’s war threats go into hyperdrive: First off, Iran announced today that it intends to keep the war hot ALL THE WAY THROUGH TO THE END OF THE TRUMP PRESIDENCY in order to teach the US to never attack it again! (So, prices of fuel to go down? Inflation to stay soft due to falling energy prices? I think, NO WAY! Hormuz under US control? NO WAY. Bessent a liar. Yes, daily, along with his blabbergassing boss.)
Iran has suggested it could deliberately prolong the war with the US until Donald Trump leaves office, in order to send a message that attacking the country has lasting consequences. Mohammad Reza Naghdi, senior adviser to the commander of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, said dragging out the war would show any future US administration that “there is a cost” to hostile endeavours against Iran. “We have to attain deterrence so that the enemy never dares to attack us, so we can live with security,” he told PBS NewsHour.
His comments came as Iran again rejected Donald Trump’s claims that the US has “total control” over the Strait of Hormuz. Iran’s Persian Gulf Strait Authority said “the Strait of Hormuz remains blocked” and it will not be opened until Iran’s conditions are accepted. The conditions? Pay us a ton of money—enough to cover the full cost of EVERYTHING you damaged. Get your butts completely out of our neighborhood, except that your own ships stay stranded as our hostages inside the gulf, and leave our enriched uranium alone while we now tell you up front that we are going to build build a bomb with it.
Going to be accepted by Trump and Bessent? No. And that, as I’ve said all along, is the way Iran wants it. They want to hold Trump in the war in order to keep punishing the US for attacking them. As I noted for the last few months, they are not interested in negotiating.
Trump earlier said that “praise be to Allah”, Washington has “total control over the Strait of Hormuz”, adding: “I THINK WE WILL KEEP IT!” Liar-in-chief. Every word completely delusional. The only people more delusional are those who continue to believe him when the real truth all around them is so obvious and is now as close as their nearest gas pump! If anyone thinks Trump has total control over the Strait of Hormuz, they should go buy some gas or diesel today and send me a photo of the price. Then send me another one next week. Or they can look a little further away from home to what other watchers are telling them:
Just 13 vessels transited the waterway on Tuesday, around 90 per cent below the pre-war daily average. Or they can listen to how Iran is telling them this is going to go because the Iranians (to our great shame) have been the ones telling us the truth every time Trump has lied to us. “Look, we have to attain deterrence so that the enemy never dares to attack us, so we can live with security,” Naqdi said in an interview with PBS. “One way is to prolong this war until we get to the next term of the presidency and cause attrition, so that if anyone else wants to attack Iran, they will know there is a cost.” It keeps being the war of attrition I said from the start Iran was determined to create.
Meanwhile, Iran’s Houthi allies attacked Saudi Aramco again today, which sent Crude prices back up, because that is how you make sure it remains a war of attrition. And Ukraine attacked another Russian refinery—this time a 200,000 bpd Gazprom facility in the Urals. Kyiv intensified attacks that have already forced Moscow to curb fuel exports and even import gasoline…. Another Urals refinery is in worse shape. The 120,000-bpd Orsknefteorgsintez plant in the Orenburg region has completely halted operations following Ukrainian drone strikes, regional governor Yevgeny Solntsev said Thursday…
But the bigger threat is this from Iran: “Whenever the conditions are favorable and the order is issued, we must be able to take the operation into enemy territory.” That be us. Iran noted that its prewar doctrine was anchored on defense. Its new doctrine is based on the principle that the best defense is a good offense. Military.com underscores that “Iran has reorganized its military to be more aggressive abroad as talks on ending the war with the U.S. remain mired in stalemate, a sign that Tehran is preparing for a protracted era of regional conflict.”
So, if anyone tells you oil prices are falling, send them this article. Share And if anyone tells you inflation has just started coming down, remind them that just about the only thing that came down in inflation was energy, which fell enough to offset all the other areas where prices rose, and then send them this article about what just happened to fuel prices. Share. Like I say, “The news before it happens.”
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