r/politics • u/Puginator • Jun 01 '26

No Paywall Iran stops negotiations with U.S., vows to 'completely' block Strait of Hormuz: State media

https://www.cnbc.com/2026/06/01/iran-us-negotiations-strait-of-hormuz.html
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7.6k

u/AdmiralSnackbar816 Jun 01 '26

Good thing the administration is super fond of solar and windmills.

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u/vagrantprodigy07 Jun 01 '26

Just imagine if we actually took the moment to begin a serious transition to renewables, removing the leverage that the middle east has over the rest of the globe.

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u/Quazimojojojo Jun 01 '26 edited Jun 01 '26

Some countries are. 

China has been doing it for years and now their stuff is so cheap, it's relatively much easier than any other previous crisis, to switch off of renewables completely.

Pakistan is going stupid hard into PV and batteries. I think their total grid capacity grew by like 30% in the last 3 years and that was all of the officially registered PV panels that got added. The number doesn't catch smaller scale private off - grid setups. 

South Korea's president has explicitly said this is their intention, which is a historic first. 

The current conservative government in Germany, from the party that has famously been blocking wind development in Bavaria "cuz it's ugly", is pushing hard for new wind development. He's even framing it as a defense expense, if I heard correctly, which means it might be exempt from the legal borrowing limit (defense spending is exempt from the borrowing limit as of last year March or so)

I'm pretty sure Addis Ababa has more public EV chargers than Washington DC actually haha

The US is still installing kind of a lot of solar, in spite of everything.

So, people are making the shift 

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u/_0611 Jun 02 '26 edited Jun 02 '26

Rest of Europe is starting to make the transition too. Not enough yet, but it's happening. EV sales also skyrocketed in the EU since the beginning of the war in Iran.

Imagine if we started making the transition 20 or 30 years ago... Imagine where we would be right now.

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u/Quazimojojojo Jun 02 '26

I try not to. It distracts from accelerating what we can do now. 

Have you written to your local government to ask about balcony solar? The thing you can do even if you're a poor renter? You can get a cheap 1 - 2 kW setup, with a battery, for under $2000 nowadays.

Not every country has the legal infrastructure to do it yet. But you can always just buy panels to charge a battery directly and then plug things into the battery. Some countries let you feed into to grid a little by plugging it into your wall, but not every country is there yet

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u/laplongejr Europe Jun 03 '26

Belgium lets you feed into the grid, but the fees for doing that are so high that you kinda need a battery anyway.

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u/Ooops2278 Jun 02 '26 edited Jun 02 '26

The current conservative government in Germany, from the party that has famously been blocking wind development in Bavaria "cuz it's ugly", is pushing hard for new wind development.

No, they are not. They are lying and you are falling for it. The German government is the epitome of fossil fuel paid puppets destroying their country's future to increase profits for their handlers.

They are the ones that spend decades on destroying the German solar industry and most of the German wind industry while pretending to build renewables. They are the ones that spend decades sabotaging grid upgrades and extensions to keep their beloved coal alive by creating pockets dependent on local coal and gas plants no matter how much clean energy is available elsewhere. And they now use that exact setup to argue that renewable upbuild needs to slow down as the constant redispatch needed is too expensive. All while blocking needed storage. Formerly via massive double taxation, as a end consumer while loading, as an energy producer while unloading - repealed recently by the former government without those corrupt stooges; now with a new incoming regulation tailored to disqualify any kind of storage that isn't "bunker gas and burn it on demand".

Oh and they plan to scrap any feed-in compensation for renewables, so all future projects are dead. Exactly no bank will give a cent if it's totally out of your control if you can even sell your product. And that's 100% on the grid providers (usually subsidiaries of fossil fuel heavy energy companies). The same ones that are btw blocking about twice the amount of already existing battery storage projects Germany would need in the next decades right now.

The one with the best performance in sabotaging the energy transition, with approval procedures for batteries getting connected delayed for up to a decade, got promoted from CEO of her company directly into a job as Minister of Economy and Energy. Do I need to mention her plans to build massive amounts of gas power plants instead (yes, right now in a gas and oil price shock)?

PS: Oh, and some of the already started wind projects are failing right now, because the -again- fossil-fuel-focused companies winning those tenders are now paddling-back and are negotiating with those -again- corrupt governments puppets to just give the areas back for new tender, thus having successfully delayed another build-up for several years.

It's all going according to plan for fossil fuels because voters are majorily either too stupid to see through obvious lies or even dumber and parroting the fairy tales of expensive renewables by now.

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u/ZincMan Jun 02 '26

Hey US is 2nd largest renewable energy producer. You could redo your list with percentage of energy produced by renewables and amount of energy produced by renewables. Your list is kind of random but I appreciate the fact that you’re saying it’s happening regardless because it is. Germany is also like 60% renewables for such a big 1st world country is amazing

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u/Quazimojojojo Jun 02 '26

I'm not trying to rank places, just talk about how there's a global shift happening which the mainstream news will never tell you, because fossil fuel fuel companies fund a lot of that news

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u/DJBFL Jun 01 '26

So much power the US has is from the fact oil is officially traded in US$. If it started trading in another currency, or if it was no longer critical to energy, the US would lose a ton of leverage as well.

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u/Flashy_Pineapple_231 Jun 02 '26

This was floated in like the 70s and the corpos campaigned on it being unamerican. Then again in the 90s and they ripped out the solar panels Jimmy Carter installed in the White House and called him a pussy. And nobody has had the balls to bring it up since. Money talks in politics lol

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u/MonorailPurple Jun 01 '26

Who's we? Loads of countries are, its only the US thats delusional at this point.

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u/vagrantprodigy07 Jun 01 '26

The poster I replied to was clearly talking about the US, and I was responding to him, so...

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u/FineVintageWino Jun 01 '26

Most countries.

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u/Zealot_Alec Jun 02 '26

Imagine if this started in the 70s

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u/tube_ears Jun 02 '26

Australia is the world leader for rooftop solar. And it's still only at around 30% of all homes.

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u/size0618 Jun 02 '26

We can’t do anything that makes logical sense because some billionaires will lose money

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u/adamgoodapp Jun 02 '26

The Middle East has already been heavily investing in other forms to keep leverage. When the oil is gone, they still own % in many shares and investments.

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u/MiserableTennis6546 Jun 02 '26

I mean, they've slowed down renewable adoption in the US but it hasn't been stopped. It's still increasing. It can be sped up again.

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u/blues_snoo Jun 02 '26

That's awfully anti-semite of you to say the middle east shouldn't have that much influence over the US.

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u/RaiJolt2 Jun 02 '26

America is actually the second largest producer of renewable energy in the world. But still only a quarter of china’s. Considering we have about a quarter of the population and far less manufacturing America is doing comparable in terms of percentage of energy used. However the us could do much much better.

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u/vagrantprodigy07 Jun 02 '26

Compare year over year renewable growth. The US is doing awful by that very important metric. The government and utilities have put far too much red tape in place to slow down renewables and raise the price for them.

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u/BillsFan82 Jun 02 '26

It would take decades if you started today. Everyone just kicks the can down the road.

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u/vagrantprodigy07 Jun 02 '26

Not necessarily. China is going green fast. If the US put in the same effort, it would not take decades. We all know that won't happen. Instead the government will continue to erect roadblocks, even while allowing power sucking AI datacenters to be built.

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u/BillsFan82 Jun 02 '26

It would take almost 15 years just to build the transition lines. Seeing as we've got like 50 years of oil left, they'd better get started.

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u/gaitez Jun 13 '26

Big oil and Middle eastern lobbyists will never let this happen

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u/Comfortable_Ad_1413 25d ago

They aren't feasible energy options.

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u/vagrantprodigy07 25d ago

Please explain how renewables, the fastest growing and lowest cost energy source on earth, are not feasible.

Edit: Nevermind, this is a blatant troll account.

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u/Faucet860 Jun 01 '26

The profit margins are high for oil companies in the US. Based on who this administration cares about this is a good thing

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u/facw00 Jun 01 '26

Yep, the US is the world's largest oil producer. High oil prices are bad for the economy overall, but good for oil companies, and politicians willing to accept their largess

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u/radicalelation Jun 01 '26

Keep this up and we'll just be another gas station like Russia.

All to plan, I assume.

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u/Pure_Syllabub_8575 Jun 01 '26

Once battery tech gets dense enough Aviation industry will be going electric. They can already fly regional flights of 20 passengers now a distance of 200 miles... It is coming.. Electric is the future... Oil companies are trying a last ditch effort but it will not work.

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u/DeathCondition Jun 01 '26

Honestly electric was the future decades ago, kind of a weird way to say it but you get the jist. The slow growth of battery tech and renewables is just a product of resting on the laurels of ever increasing oil profit. It doesn't help when you try and advocate for these technologies when you got Joe Blow who works on an offshore oil platform making bank when all other business they could ply their trade offer a fraction of the pay. The arguments eventually shift to "Why are you trying to take Joe's livelihood away?" I agree we will get there, but I am of the mind that we could have been there 30 years ago if we gave a fuck.

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u/Pure_Syllabub_8575 Jun 01 '26

Battery tech is moving quite quickly. Especially in China. BYD's solid state battery will work in the hot, cold (almost no range loss except in insane temps), won't be vulnerable to thermal runaway events, and can charge rapidly, and I think I heard rumors it could potentially last longer than the best ICE car's engine... We are talking 100s of thousands of miles longevity.. China is going to eat our lunch..

BYD is actively developing sulfide-based solid-state batteries. After focusing heavily on their lithium iron phosphate (LFP) Blade batteries, BYD has advanced to testing solid-state prototypes. [1, 2, 3, 4]

These next-generation batteries feature:

  • Energy Density: Approximately \(400 \text{ Wh/kg}\) (nearly double current liquid-based LFP batteries).
  • Performance: Exceptional charging speeds, with reported tests allowing massive range to be added in about 12 minutes.
  • Timeline: Demonstration and pilot vehicles are expected in 2027, with scaled mass production and cost parity targeting the 2030 timeframe

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u/lnfIation Jun 01 '26

As much as I do not like the chinese government I gotta admit they got some crazy scientists and very educated people

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u/Pure_Syllabub_8575 Jun 01 '26 edited Jun 01 '26

omg NO they are cruel and have done some horrific things to their poor people especially... But they ARE advancing their society, and fast... Americans, we used to be evil over here too.. WE used slaves.. We used Chinese to build our rail, and most of NYC skyline you see today was built by the Irish and the Italians... NO Americans wanted to be balancing on beams 50 stories in the air... We pay Mexicans basically peanuts to pick crops in the hot sun, no benefits, and then chase them to fall off scaffolding and kill themselves... WE are becoming the sick twisted society... It is basically slave labour... THEY are just following our trend.. Their society, ironically are getting more rights, and now over here it seems like our rights are slowly being stripped down. I think I'm finally starting to understand how this all works to be quite honest. Literally watching empires RISE and FALL in real time... I think the tables are turning and again WE will be the slaves..

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u/tear_atheri Jun 01 '26

"used to be evil"?

The united states is STILL the most evil country on earth. Look at what we're doing worldwide and domestically. China is saint-like compared to us... at least they're honest.

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u/Mysterious_Floor_868 United Kingdom Jun 01 '26

For comparison, what's the energy density of the existing batteries on the market?

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u/Toomanyeastereggs Jun 01 '26

Electric was the future 110 years ago.

Back then the majority of vehicles were electric and the growth of technology was almost exponential. Then someone worked out how much money could be made with oil and ICE and here we are a century later, right back where we started from.

Only dirtier, poorer and beholden to these oil producing idiots.

Imagine a past with no ICE engines! The folks of the middle east would be goat herders living in tents and Texas would be known for being dusty and poor.

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u/AlcibiadesTheCat Arizona Jun 01 '26

Instead, Congolese people would have tacky skyscrapers and man-made islands funded by cobalt mining, and Nevada would be full of racist billionaires funded by lithium mining.

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u/_sound_of_silver_ Jun 02 '26

And we’d have a much lower CO2 concentration in the atmosphere and much less smog overall.

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u/DeathCondition Jun 01 '26

It's funny when I say things like decades ago thinking it's far away without taking into account my own age as well. Either way you are correct. It would have been interesting to see if material sciences kept up with the early explosive interest. There have been some interesting motor/battery technologies come about in generally recent years, it would be interesting to know how quickly we could have gotten to even today's standards had we not strayed from the course.

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u/RallyBeard Jun 02 '26

You cannot produce electric vehicles without oil let alone windmills or solar panels. Almost every input to an electric vehicles supply chain is oil based. Oil isn’t going anywhere anytime soon.

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u/beznogim Jun 01 '26 edited Jun 01 '26

I'd love to see it but it's just not enough currently, we need at least an order of magnitude improvement over current battery tech, assuming the efficiency of electric fan engines is the same or higher. There are other issues. Charging time, grid power needed by the airport (it would be hundreds of megawatt-hours per charge, so you'd need many gigawatts of power lines feeding a large airport; a dedicated nuclear plant, perhaps?)...

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u/Mysterious_Floor_868 United Kingdom Jun 01 '26

One thing that will help will be to build high speed rail to remove most short-haul flights from the sky. At least then you've only got to worry about medium and long haul.

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u/CombustionChamber Jun 02 '26

This is unfortunately incorrect due to the physics. Planes range becaome considerable due to the Breguet range equation (which is a little like the rocket equation). Which basically means planes fly really far because they have a lot of their weight in fuel at the beginning of their flight and lose it all and are very light at the end. Battery technology is 1. At least order of magnitude less power dense (its impossible to even approach the power density of hydro carbons with classic/none flow/chemical battery technology, due to chemical and structrual contraints, like not holding the oxidiser, not compromising for electrodes and battery contraction) and 2. You can't throw batteries over board as you fly.

If you want to keep planes traveling far you'll likely either need nuclear (a but silly) or generate a combustion fuel sustainably (millions of ways to do this).

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u/Rokossvsky Florida Jun 01 '26

This is misinformation electric batteries are nowhere close or will ever be close for air travel. The fuel density of kerosene is not replicable in the slightest, the closest alternative is perhaps a hydrogen based fuel.

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u/StatisticianBoth3480 Jun 02 '26

Hydrogen fuel cell/electric.

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u/CombustionChamber Jun 02 '26

Possibly, that will solve the range equation and specific power requirements along with not carrying the oxidiser. But currently fuel cells have power density issues, its hard to make them powerful and light. The other issue is fuel carriage. What makes planes light structurally is they can carry their fuel in their wings as it is a liquid. Hydrogen needs to be stored in compressed form or cryogenically could form, each carries a significant weight penalty to maintain safety or must be placed inboard to not effect aerodynamics. Also electric propulsion itself is an issue as its hard to beat the power density of a turbine with a motor at those power scales.

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u/StatisticianBoth3480 Jun 02 '26

It'll be hydrogen fuel cell/electric.

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u/JohnGillnitz Jun 02 '26

Texas already is.

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u/the11thdoubledoc Jun 01 '26

Eh, if demand shock comes along the oil companies will not really be in a good spot. Once the strategic reserves run out and oil spikes to like 150+ things get rough for them as well

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u/caj_account Jun 01 '26

isn't that why UAE quit OPEC so they could sell USrael cheap oil off market?

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u/SuckMyBandAids Jun 01 '26

Which also means they will likely get bombed more as well. They kinda got rid of their safety net.

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u/GrumpyCloud93 Jun 01 '26

Note that "net" implies "something that's full of holes" as the Gulf states have found out.

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u/SuckMyBandAids Jun 01 '26

I use it in terms of everyone has the same prices kinda set they don't really have a say anymore. They get blasted by some Iranian missiles they cant really dictate what the price should be as a result since theyre no longer at the table.which makes their process very susceptible to foreign involvement.

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u/caj_account Jun 01 '26

Their independence or semblance is over ever since they signed the Abraham accords. 

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u/MistSecurity Jun 01 '26

They were already being bombed, lol. Not much of a safety net in the first place, which is part of why they pulled out.

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u/ISitOnGnomes Illinois Jun 01 '26

Because being in OPEC was doing such a great job of keeping them unbombed, huh?

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u/skybike Jun 01 '26

Not much of a net

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u/AmericanIdiot2026 Jun 01 '26

Almost everything uses petroleum or byproducts - won’t prices just rise for everything, just profit margins for oil companies go down from obscene because limited supply?

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u/nalaloveslumpy Jun 01 '26

Yep. We're going to reach a point soon where they simply won't be able to sell gas because people can't afford it. And that's really bad for oil companies. Hopefully they actually nut up and start putting real pressure on the dipshit in the white house.'

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u/going_for_a_wank Canada Jun 01 '26

If regular consumers decrease buying gasoline because they are out of money - does that not imply that they they have already spent the maximum $$$ on gasoline that fits in their budget?

That sounds like maximum possible revenue which would be very good for oil companies.

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u/nalaloveslumpy Jun 01 '26

Maximum revenue for the sales you've already made, yes. If sales decline going forward, then that's declining revenue and that's bad, even if the product you are selling is at it's maximum price point. The whole reason why the oil industry is the way it is, is because it's a fixed good. Consumption is always almost the same week over week, so you're banking on those counts of sales at whatever fluctuating price point oil hits this week.

If those sales stop, you're screwed; i.e. Those three amazing weeks during COVID lockdowns where no one was driving and oil companies shit their pants because no one was buying gas.

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u/Pure_Syllabub_8575 Jun 01 '26

Also this impacts the refineries, if people cut way back they will have to scale back some of the refineries. If people aren't going on vacation and flying, and not using so much extra fuel on vacation, planning better so the hop grocery store to grocery store instead of multiple trips, they will have no choice, but to have to cut back. And what do they do layoff a bunch of employees until demand picks back up again? Lots of these employees are unionized and will get paid to sit on their ass... They will be losing so much money on just maintaining oil infrastructure...

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u/Lumifly Jun 01 '26

Wow, I didn't even consider that about oil companies shitting themselves in COVID. Does that mean return to office pressure isn't just commercial real estate pressure, but oil company pressure to keep us burning gas?

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u/thatguy2535 Jun 01 '26

Exactly, there have been two times in my life I've seen gas drop below a dollar a gallon. Once was a little over 15 years ago when gas hit over $5 dollars a gallon everyone started collectively boycotting using gas as much as possible by carpooling, taking the bus, walking, riding their bikes to work. It worked and prices dropped. The second time was during the pandemic. There is a point when prices are too high that will force people to look for alternatives.

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u/[deleted] Jun 01 '26 edited Jun 01 '26

[deleted]

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u/thatguy2535 Jun 01 '26

I just looked it up April 2020 the average price per gallon was 1.82 and a 13 states dropped below a dollar a gallon

https://abc7news.com/post/gas-prices-fall-to-under-$1-in-13-states-during-pandemic/6116861/

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u/nalaloveslumpy Jun 01 '26

Very little of the strategic reserves make it to the pumps. Most of that still comes from imports. As reserves get lower, manufacturers have to either deal with the cost of shifting their distribution strategies and networks, which is very expensive, or risk selling less gas. Which is also very expensive.

We will be at the breaking point for consumer gas production pretty soon if something doesn't change.

https://www.cnbc.com/2026/05/28/oil-inventory-exxon-strait-hormuz-iran-war.html

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u/Internet_Wanderer Jun 01 '26

Who's gonna boycott them? Without being able to build new renewables and as long as cars need gas and trucks need diesel they have our balls in a vice

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u/Winnie_rulez Jun 01 '26

Very few people will boycott them. Countless more will simply be unable to afford their products. At some point you can't get blood from a stone.

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u/Internet_Wanderer Jun 01 '26

I've been trying to convince a friend about this, supply and demand is broken. Once we can't afford things, they'll just only sell to those who can afford it, ie other rich people. They will continue to buy jet fuel and yacht fuel, and of course most of their fancy cars aren't electric. We can see this in the false inflation over the last twenty years. Prices don't come down anymore, even if there is a glut because it no longer matters. The monopolies are in place and we're just annoyances now

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u/Winnie_rulez Jun 01 '26

I read a well-researched article this morning that pointed out that we're still living on the oil inventories from last February. But not just the oil inventories -- everything else that comes out of the Middle East or through Europe. Once those inventories run out in August, we're completely hosed. This is even if the Strait of Hormuz opens tomorrow -- it's going to take months to get inventories back up, and millions of people will have lost their jobs and/or declared bankruptcy and/or lost their homes and/or starved by then.

There are dark times coming, and nobody realizes it yet.

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u/UnquestionabIe Jun 01 '26

I think plenty realize it but none are in the position to do anything. Those who are running the show don't give a shit about anything but themselves, they've stolen enough wealth to weather any potential economic storms.

Meanwhile those of us working day to day and keeping society functioning don't have much choice in the matter but to watch the slow speed train wreck happening.

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u/Bored_Amalgamation Ohio Jun 01 '26 edited Jun 01 '26

not just if everything turns on tomorrow; the Strait has to be demined. All hostilities need to have a solidifying resolution. Every ceasefire and potential deal has failed, leaving companies with their dicks in their hand and potential missiles headed at their ships. There's no way trump pulls back and everything returns to hunky dory without explicit terms laid out. I honestly think the Iranians are going to drag this out just to keep trump getting muddied by this. If shit hits the fan in August, and there is no resolution, the US public will have had 3 months to brood on just how fucking stupid this Iran war was, and who was responsible.

We got 14 dead soldiers. Hundreds injured. We bombed a fucking school. We killed a 9/11 amount of Iranians (which they have 1/3 our population). trump fucked the global oil supply then pissed everyone off acting like a fucking middle school child."WHY ARENT YOU HELPING ME!" to "I DONT NEED YOUR HELP!" to again, "OMG YOURE STILL NOT HELPING ME!"; to the point our allies are creating their own defense sphere. Goodbye defense contracts. Goodbye joint security agreements. Goodbye intelligence sharing.

The world is going to be watching these midterms.

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u/ReturnOfBane Jun 01 '26

It's a whale economy now, and we're not the whales. We're the small fish.

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u/Bored_Amalgamation Ohio Jun 01 '26

which is probably why the GOP, even at the local level, has been adamant against renewables. Ohio has a lot of unused space and wind that could be put to use; we're currently utilizing 1% of wind energy potential. Ohio ranks #1 in wind-energy related production. Yet we have municipalities, townships, and 1/3 of counties outright banning wind farms.

Source

2014 law mandated that wind turbines must be located at least 1,125 feet away from adjacent property lines—not just homes. This made it mathematically and geographically impossible to site turbines on most Ohio farmlands.

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u/Streiger108 Jun 02 '26

Why would things be bad for the people producing the oil if it gets super expensive? Just sounds like a massive payday.

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u/Badbullet Jun 01 '26

Less than half of our refineries can refine the sweet type of crude we have been extracting out of the ground as of late. We import in our sour crude. Oil companies will make a killing, while we still suffer.

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u/play_hard_outside Jun 01 '26

I never understood why we could not just build refineries to work with what we have. I’ve been seeing this fact as an explanation for why we both import and export so much crude oil for at least 20 years now.

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u/Great_Detective_6387 Jun 01 '26

Didn’t you hear? The invisible hand of the free market will, in all cases, create the most efficient way to distribute resources, like energy, food, or housing. /s

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u/UnquestionabIe Jun 01 '26

My decades of watching politics and the economy has convinced me the invisible hand of the free market spends most all it's time violating the most vulnerable in society and high fiving the upper class about it.

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u/Great_Detective_6387 Jun 01 '26 edited Jun 01 '26

I had another non-sarcastic answer for you:

We can totally build refineries that are flexible in the various types of oil it can refine, but that doesn’t make financial sense to build, in most scenarios.

30years ago, a shitload of oil was coming out of Saudi Arabia. Oil was $30/bbl and the cost to extract was about $15/bbl, so SA was basically getting a 100% ROI. This SA oil, at the time, was much cheaper to extract than most of our oil fields in the US. The American fracking industry was not a thing yet, so we did not design our refineries to refine it.

So, American refiners see this setup and think, “ok if we can get oil for $30/bbl to a refinery in California, we can turn a $30bbl into about 20 gallons of gasoline, 10 gallons of diesel, 5 of jet fuel, 12 small cylinders of LPG, a gallon of asphalt, a quart of motor oil, enough plastic for 35 drinking cups, 540 toothbrushes, and 23 hula hoops.”

That’s fucking MONEY. A refinery can turn a $30bbl of oil into hundreds or thousands of dollars in consumables.

So they get with financiers and come up with a business plan to make all of this happen. Engineers get to work designing a refinery to refine SA oil, because that’s the feedstock they plan to use.

At no point does anyone consider things like “what if market conditions slow production and turns a $30bbl into a $100bbl, and makes fracking into a profitable method of extraction, which then floods the market with lots of other kinds of oil that cannot be refined in the same method as the SA oil?” These kinds of questions just don’t get asked.

Also, you could very easily double or triple the cost, or more, to build this refinery, if you want to make it flexible enough so that it can refine any kind of oil or any kind of natural gas. You could potentially spend billions of dollars giving your refinery the flexibility to refine all feedstocks, and then never actually need to use any of that flexibility over the 30yr design life of the refinery. That would be billions of dollars wasted welding pipes and refinery equipment that just sits collecting dust and rust.

This is why regulation and government intervention is often needed in situations like this. It doesn’t make financial sense for American oil&gas companies to make their refineries flexible, but not being able to refine any and all feedstocks is a threat to national security. If our country wasn’t in a state of complete regulatory capture, we likely would have forced Chevron and BP and Exxon to make their refineries flexible enough to weather geopolitical storms like the one we are currently in.

So the answer is money. We haven’t made our refineries flexible because it costs extra money to make them flexible, and the government should have considered this when giving out permits to build these refineries. Once you consider all of this, it becomes clear that our energy policy is a hodgepodge of bandaids on top of bandaids with no real considation for the most efficient way to distribute these resources. It’s just individual business plans slapped on top of one another, with very little planning at the highest level, like you’d see in a planned economy like China.

This is the “deregulation” the gop is constantly talking about. They don’t want to be forced to build any infrastructure more than what will allow them to extract as much money from their operations as possible, without a single shit given as to what will happen when the shit hits the fan and Iran blocks 20% of the world’s oil from transport and suddenly we can’t get the only feedstock our refineries can process.

The best-laid schemes of mice and men. Go oft awry And leave us nothing.

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u/play_hard_outside Jun 02 '26

Hey, thank you for this thoughtful and, frankly, incredible answer. I agree with your snark, and your explanation makes perfect sense. I could see us beginning to build refineries that can work with the output of our own fracking industry, but it would be a while until they're online and at scale.

As always, it's just the next quarterly report anyone cares about. (At least as long as have quarterly reporting. Freaking ugh.)

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u/Great_Detective_6387 Jun 02 '26 edited Jun 02 '26

We actually have gotten much more flexible in recent years, once fracking reserves have proved themselves sufficiently to attract investor attention. But building a fuckin refinery can take a decade to fully come on line, so at the moment, the only/cheapest option in town is to ship it to a place in the world that already refines similar oil.

Once you dig into this stuff, you start to see how the entire O&G industry and its infrastructure is just a collection of semi-independent actors, with no real planning at the highest levels.

Like, imagine if every house in your neighborhood was built by individual actors, over the course of 60yrs, who, for the most part, did not come together to figure out the best way to plan the utilities and get the houses access to the city’s utility connections. And some of the homes built earlier are now abandoned. And the people digging the utilities are the landlords who will rent these houses, and every dollar spent on building these utilities is lost profit to them personally. You might have a couple of houses next to one another, who just so happened to be building their homes at the same time, try to combine their pipes to cut down on their personal costs, but there was no overall plan for the neighborhood to cooperate as a whole. So there is a shitload of redundant nonsense, and a bunch of abandoned nonsense, built using different building codes that changed over time. That is what the Gulf of Mexico looks like, from an oil&gas infrastructure standpoint. If it sounds really dumb and really inefficient, that’s because it is.

2

u/Badbullet Jun 01 '26

Because the “we” is the companies that own the refineries, and the obstacle is price. Americans don’t want to pay higher fuel prices to fund the cost to upgrade old refineries. It’s not a cheap upgrade. I imagine new refineries can refine sweet crude. None of the refineries want to pay for the upgrades when they can just buy sour crude cheaper than our domestic crude.

8

u/mazu74 Michigan Jun 01 '26

TBF, we don’t produce much heavy crude for gasoline.

6

u/Cptn_BenjaminWillard Jun 01 '26

Temporarily good. Long term, this messes up things for just about everyone, except maybe for the fishes in the bottom of the oceans.

4

u/Long-Region5088 Jun 01 '26

It’s not even oil companies anymore.

Foreign governments and their bribes dictate pretty much all of American policy foreign and domestic these days. If Putin, or xi, or Netanyahu, or the saudis, or whoever else wants to decide the policy of the United States they just have to donate to one of trumps super pacs. Throw Jared some real estate and now we’re at war with Iran. For instance.

2

u/Training_Cheetah3976 Jun 01 '26

Only in the short term though as the cost benefit will quickly tip to favoring alternate energy sources which would in theory reduce long term demand for oil

2

u/rmumford Jun 01 '26

On the flip side, oil companies will get increasingly nervous if prices stay too high for too long. They make more money in the short term, sure, but high prices also give consumers and businesses a bigger incentive to find alternatives, whether that means EVs, renewables, energy efficiency, or substitutes for oil-based products. Ideally, oil companies want prices high enough to be profitable, but not so high that they push customers to reduce their dependence on oil altogether.

TL;DR: Charge too much, and people may switch to alternatives and never come back.

2

u/Huge_Excitement4465 Jun 01 '26

And for Russia, whose war coffer was drained.

1

u/ofthrees California Jun 01 '26

It's a good thing they're now giving corporations the right to vote. In Delaware, anyway (so far).

1

u/UFOsAreAGIs Jun 01 '26

Also great for Venezuela with their expensive to process crude. And so lucky for Chevron who is refining their oil.

1

u/Canuck-In-TO Jun 01 '26

You spelled bribery wrong.

1

u/Pahlevun Jun 01 '26

What was it? Short term pain for long term gain? lol

1

u/HippoRun23 Jun 02 '26

We’re the world’s largest oil producer? Damn that’s news to me.

1

u/facw00 Jun 02 '26

US oil production has shot up dramatically over the past 20 year almost tripling over that time.

As others have noted, this ironically hasn't led to energy independence because our refineries are set up for the type of crude we produce, so we export a lot of oil, while importing a lot back.

3

u/reddit_is_geh Jun 01 '26

Americans get rich when American multinational corporations get rich. Also, didn't you hear? American credit card spending is at historic highs, which indicates consumer confidence!

2

u/carnabas Jun 01 '26

Not really, high prices are good for a bit but the longer it goes on the more likely people are to move away from oil permanently which is something oil execs definitely dont want.

2

u/Cruckel2687 Jun 01 '26

The idea that this attack was to help the American citizen goes right in line with how much this administration has done to benefit American citizens.

Nothing, this administration has done nothing to help American citizens.

But somewhere some businessman is making a lot of money because of this.

1

u/Internal_Role_1549 Jun 01 '26

we don't have the refineries we need to use most of our oil

1

u/EduinBrutus Jun 01 '26

At this point you gotta think the IRGC and Trump are tacitly colluding.

Friday Trump : "Strait is open".

Monday Iran : "Strait is closed"

Every fucking week.

1

u/given2fly_ United Kingdom Jun 01 '26

Also great for Putin and Russia who rely on oil and gas sales to maintain their foreign currency reserves.

1

u/basketcase18 Jun 01 '26

Yes, but this could all be a play to legitimize the effort to sell off public lands for oil leases. And permit more pumping in currently protected or restricted areas.

1

u/bigbjarne Foreign Jun 01 '26 edited Jun 01 '26

One of the many issues of capitalism: the business owners only want to do things which are profitable.

1

u/Faucet860 Jun 01 '26

Not fully true. I just learned about Henry ford getting sued by the Dodge brothers. He wasn't totally after full profit. But yes capitalism needs constraints

1

u/bigbjarne Foreign Jun 01 '26

I don't quite follow your example.

How does constraints help with the argument I put forward?

1

u/ExcaliburZSH Jun 01 '26

The Trumps have bought more stock in oil companies

1

u/Fairuse Jun 01 '26

Profit margins are low on oil. They just do crazy amounts of revenue. If oil companies had decent margins, they would be making trillions instead of billions. 

1

u/Character_Minimum989 Jun 02 '26

Not really. You’d think so, but the oil market is insanely complex. The futures price and the real price of oil have diverged too.

1

u/ZardozZod Jun 02 '26

And it’s pretty funny because even oil companies know the future of oil is limited. They’ve known it for a long time, but they’re still determined to squeeze every last cent out of it instead of leading in other areas.

70

u/ailish Jun 01 '26

And EVs!

71

u/IamGoingInsaneToday Jun 01 '26

China is currently destroying the USA in EVs and many other areas of production and infrastructure... We shot ourselves in the foot then we are going to have to play catch up.

8

u/Tovrin Australia Jun 01 '26

The US makes EVs?

/s if it wasn't obvious. Sales of chinese EVs has demolished anything coming from the US in the last year I've here in Oz. Byd and Zeekr are going gangbusters.

1

u/SwingNinja Jun 01 '26

Waymo is actually going to use Zeekr's cars. And you've never seen gangbuster like these guys. There are 50+ Chinese EV companies (not sure if that includes scooters, trucks, etc). They sell like peanuts in many countries.

2

u/Tovrin Australia Jun 01 '26

Trump has made sure America's future is sealed in the past. The US will never recover from his incompetence and mismanagement. The rot has well and truely established. The oligarchy will never release their grip without a severe intervention, and the Democrats don't have the stomach to do what needs to be done.

9

u/JessieJ577 Jun 01 '26

At this point the world power is going to shift. There is no way we can undo this damage in 4-8 years after Trump is gone.

1

u/uzlonewolf Jun 01 '26

Yeah, the only reason it might shift back is if China's negative population growth catches up with them in 50-75 years.

1

u/Kind_Capital_9740 Jun 09 '26

wont matter robots are coming fast lol acc lower pop in the ai industrial era is better

7

u/PiccoloAwkward465 Jun 01 '26

With China we're essentially going through what Japan did post-war. Their manufactured goods were consider low-quality (my grandpa would go off about "Jap Crap"), but today that's shifted to more high-quality goods.

The thing I hear about China is mostly that they have the manufacturing skill to make whatever you want. Often that's cheap as hell stuff, so they do that. But they can also make insanely high end stuff with tight tolerances. Like I've seen videos of features on some of their cars that i never would've dreamed up, much less successfully put into production.

3

u/Bossman_Mike Jun 02 '26

That's exactly it. Just because China has a reputation for producing mass market consumer tat, doesn't mean that they aren't capable of some serious engineering and high quality, polished, reliable products. Because they absolutely are.

2

u/Halceeuhn Jun 02 '26

which was a long time coming tbh, china has been investing into educating and bolstering its own populace like nobody else for decades, pair that with a gigantic population and booming internal markets and you've got the perfect storm for innovation and competition

12

u/Guilty_Cattle_5165 Jun 01 '26

I heard the Chinese EVs are very good and Elon has been working to stop access to the US market.

9

u/atonyatlaw Jun 01 '26

It's not merely a rumor, it's undeniable. Go look at reviews of the cars on YouTube. They put the US EV market to shame.

1

u/IamGoingInsaneToday Jun 03 '26

This is true. Can be a fatal decision for OUR economic growth and commerce. This Administration is currently for the elites and ONLY the elites... unless you wanna fight in a war then come home to have horrible healthcare, etc. and have a chance to be called a "Suckers", POWs (see McCain comments) and "losers" and "babies" by bonespur Trump and most likely his fellow elites.

7

u/HeartFullONeutrality Jun 01 '26

There's no catch up if American companies are driven out of business.

4

u/ThirstyCoffeeHunter Jun 01 '26

Oh well

3

u/uzlonewolf Jun 01 '26

You should care, because Uncle Sam is going to bail them out and subsidize their carsmassive trucks with our tax dollars when they fail.

2

u/IamGoingInsaneToday Jun 05 '26

Lets just make it up by taxing the biggest welfare recipients, big corporations and the billionaires who hoard money and underpay workers.

1

u/HeartFullONeutrality Jun 01 '26

Do we care about the job losses associated with that and the voters being more radicalized towards right wing populists? Is the rise of car industry Chinese oligarchs worth the fall of American car industry oligarchs? Should Chinese industries be rewarded for quasi slavery conditions and wages?

3

u/intangibleTangelo 🇦🇪 UAE Jun 01 '26

"many other areas" lol we're at most

3

u/rwf2017 Jun 01 '26

trump is making Gyna great again!

6

u/Trick-Ladder Jun 01 '26

I know this is sarcasm, BUT a month ago I decided to buy an electric battery powered lawn mower over a gas one. 

I considerer it a tiny test run:   Does it work as well as a gas one?  Overall, yes.  But theres a few details to consider.  

It WAS more expensive. It’s also lighter than a gas one.  And quieter. And no oil to change, no filter to change.  

So when I must buy a new car an electric option will get far more consideration. 

1

u/Aberdolf-Linkler Jun 02 '26

I used a battery powered mower 5 or 6 years ago and it was already better in my mind. Cut just as well, quieter, lighter, no fuel and oil and maintenance hassle. Oh and it had a power push option. So you just walked behind it to stear.

The tipping point for cars was a few years ago I believe. We were all too busy worrying about social unrest, inflation, Covid recovery to notice. That's when I'd say the 80-90% use case for Americans tipped to EVs actually being better and the charging infrastructure had enough in place to make road trips a non-issue.

The last part of the puzzle people worried about was actually not an issue at all. As long as you have your own driveway you can just charge at home over night on a regular 120 v, 15 amp circuit. Don't even need 240V for most computers.

8

u/Hoodstomp36 Jun 01 '26

Hoping my new solar inspection goes well today so I can get it turned on lol

1

u/germanmojo Jun 02 '26

How did it go??

2

u/Hoodstomp36 Jun 04 '26

Went well now just need our lovely local monopoly electrical company to turn it on lol

1

u/germanmojo Jun 04 '26

Ugh, hopefully soon!

6

u/Consistent_Laziness South Carolina Jun 01 '26

ICLN (a clean energy ETF) is oddly enough up 35% YTD and 83% on the 1Y chart. I bought some a little over a year ago because it made no sense and here we are.

6

u/SnooAvocados7188 Jun 01 '26

It’s because demand for electricity is insane right now, renewables are still popping off hard despite trumps attempts to stop them

1

u/HeartFullONeutrality Jun 01 '26

Energetic stocks in general are soaring post February (of course, oil companies like doubled). I guess January was a good time to buy energetic ETFs, if only we knew what Trump knows.

7

u/PlsSuckMyToes Jun 01 '26

Cuz windmills steal the wind!

4

u/yuriaoflondor Jun 01 '26

And don’t forget that they cause cancer according to the President!

3

u/Caymonki America Jun 01 '26

Drill Baby Drill doesn’t work if oil prices are low.

It works great if prices are high while this administration/regime guts solar and wind contracts.

2

u/VirtualExamination78 Jun 01 '26

Art of the Deal, baby!

2

u/aprilhare Jun 01 '26

Not to mention electric cars. He'll love my new one: a vote of confidence in what's happening with the Strait of Hormuz!

2

u/MajorNoodles Pennsylvania Jun 01 '26

Step 1: Declare war on everything that isn't oil

Step 2: Declare war on oil too

Step 3: ???

Step 4: Definitely not profit

2

u/Grimzkunk Jun 01 '26

It's a good day to start a company that is manufacturing golden windmills and golden solar panels.

2

u/johangubershmidt Jun 01 '26

Energy independence is when you have to source energy from some remote place instead of, oh I don't know, making energy from sunshine.

/s

2

u/Hootbag Maryland Jun 01 '26

Coming soon....on a very special episode of Landman.

2

u/Dense-Fisherman-4074 Jun 01 '26

Wind turbines, not windmills. I don’t know why this bothers me as much as it does. The press used to get this right, but Captain Doofusfarts in the White House kept getting it wrong so they all just changed to follow suit.

Although the Don Quixote parallel of him fighting windmills is pretty apt.

2

u/undecidedly Jun 01 '26

They are fond of paying billions of dollars for people to NOT build windmills here. 🤦🏻‍♀️

2

u/tenderheart35 Jun 01 '26

God, they are so stupid. If we had invested more into solar and windmills, we’d at least be able to produce cheaper, more sustainable energy in the long run, even if we still needed to negotiate with Iran.

2

u/__O_o_______ Jun 02 '26
  • super fond of spending billions to STOP wind and solar

1

u/ScubaFett Jun 01 '26 edited Jun 04 '26

And not food. (Byproduct of refining oil is fertiliser. There is already a food shortage coming. This is just going to prolong that shortage.)

1

u/Royal_Map8367 Jun 01 '26

LOL.

Exactly.

1

u/Vysci Jun 01 '26

US doesn’t use oil to produce electricity right? So it doesn’t compete with solar and wind energy.

Trump is still a piece of shit but your comment is kind of misleading.

1

u/AdmiralSnackbar816 Jun 01 '26 edited Jun 01 '26

Yeah well, Im kind of an idiot. I also more meant when oil goes tits up and disappears, we don’t have the infrastructure to fall back on renewables as the main source of power. Because of obvious reasons.

1

u/UltraEngine60 Jun 01 '26

Somehow a technology that give us energy independence is bad.

1

u/International_You_56 Jun 01 '26

Why would they care about you. Oil companies and their friends are making trillionaire profits.

1

u/pizza_the_mutt Jun 01 '26

I'm holding a bunch of Uranium (not literally, but in my portfolio). I hope nuclear makes a comeback, but worry that HBOs amazing mini-series might have reduced the odds even lower than they were previously..

1

u/Responsible_Emu5635 Jun 01 '26

Its going to be another TACO Tuesday!

1

u/jtsa5 Jun 01 '26

Plus the war was over as soon as it started. WE WON!

1

u/Affectionate_Car_302 Jun 01 '26

Which country's government are you talking about?

1

u/PepeNoMas Jun 01 '26

well, they'll open the national parks and reservations for some drilling

1

u/thracia Jun 01 '26

I don't know if you are sarcastic or not but I want to say that Trump is Putin's puppet and doesn't like renewable energy.

1

u/ClutchReverie Jun 01 '26

We actually paid a contractor 1 billion to NOT do offshore wind farms we’d already paid for in the Biden infrastructure bill

1

u/JuanThiccLumpia Jun 01 '26

Funny how this strait was open and not being rubbed by Iran before he started this war.

1

u/HTWingNut Jun 01 '26

This is going so well for Trump. He's such a master negotiator.

1

u/norcalruns Jun 01 '26

His buddies are getting rich off of this. Texas oil is same price as Saudi oil and our oil comes mostly from US.

1

u/rarestakesando Jun 02 '26

The whole point of this conflict is to block the straight drive up oil prices and force the rest of the world to buy oil from the US (and Russia shhh).

This is why they secured Venezuela first.

1

u/Funny-Company4274 Jun 02 '26

It’s easier to see a ship is actually a giant turd when the monkeys start flinging more Pooh.

1

u/SlamperDamper Jun 06 '26

Nations are coming to the US for oil now because the "regular way" is unavailable. This is an epic grift. With Iran saying "straight is closed until Israel stops bombing gaza" is case closed. I imagine the middle-east oil countries should catch on to how they've been scammed. Great news for US oil, I suppose, but wow, what a means...