I’ve made quite a few good trades on the price of oil recently. I’ve been following the market pretty much every waking hour.
But today I went out on a bike ride and started noticing something strange empty fuel stations. Not every one of them, but enough that it caught my attention. You start to see the early signs of shortages appearing.
What’s frightening is that this is only a logistics issue at the moment. Tankers are still arriving and refineries aren’t under any real pressure yet. There isn’t an actual supply problem right now.
Yet even with just the fear of shortages, pumps are already running dry in places. It’s starting to feel similar to the early days of the Russian invasion panic buying. Social media is full of people shouting “stop panic buying,” but the reality is we don’t even have a real supply crisis yet.
And that’s the worrying part.
This isn’t just numbers moving around on a trading screen. Real people rely on fuel every day Uber drivers, parcel delivery drivers, tradesmen people whose livelihoods depend on it. Many of them are already operating close to the point where fuel costs stop being economically viable.
It only really hit me today, riding around and seeing it for myself, how bad things could get if this escalates. The UK is already dealing with a massive cost of living crisis, and something like this could push things even further.
What’s even more concerning is there’s still no sign of the Strait reopening.
Oil Isn’t Just a Chart Early Signs of Fuel Stress in the UK.
byu/DullHall7 inoil
Posted by DullHall7
4 Comments
Trump is sending ground troops this weekend for sure.
Next weekend seems too late. Iran won’t negociate either way and his speech (that wasn’t anything other than rumbling that he has repeated for sometimes) shows that he’s getting more and more pressured.
If US can leave now, why would they leave in two weeks? There’s already another aircrafter carrier heading that way.
I live in part of the US with hurricane landings every 2-3 years. Gasoline/petrol stations empty about 3 days before they do. There’s always more empty space in vehicle tanks than fuel in retail distribution.
In the aftermath of a hurricane strikes, the first stations that get supplies are rapidly depleted, as those who didn’t fill tanks or are worried about supplies for their generator line up. A local radio station ensures this happens by announcing where fuel has become available.
After enough such events, I just expect no fuel for 2+ weeks (in addition to no electricity for 2+ weeks). It’s provided an excellent excuse to buy camping gear and food.
New Zealand is in full-on panic mode right now
This is melodramatic nonsense. There is no meaningful fuel crisis here, no visible wave of mass panic buying, and certainly nothing like the conditions people keep trying to compare to previous shocks. We have seen far worse buying frenzies triggered by far less, and this is nowhere near that. A few isolated empty pumps do not prove systemic shortages; they usually prove local distribution lag, routine station-level issues, or someone seeing what they want to see and writing a market fanfic around it. Tankers are still moving, refineries are not under acute pressure, and there is no broad evidence of the public stripping forecourts bare. The whole post takes a handful of anecdotal observations, injects maximum drama, and pretends it is the start of some national emergency. It is not. More to the point, there is clearly movement toward an agreement to get the straits open, which is widely expected to be announced this weekend, so the breathless line about “no sign of the Strait reopening” is especially misleading. This reads less like sober analysis and more like someone trying to turn a bike ride and a few patchy petrol stations into the collapse of modern Britain.