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Comment by state_less | Hacker News Reader

Oil spiked to $110/barrel on the WTI front month futures contract this afternoon, a $20 jump up from Friday. At this pace we'll be at $150 a barrel in a week or two. If oil infrastructure keeps getting hit, even if the strait of hormuz is reopened, it'll take a long time to recover from. That's on top of the continued call for regressive tariffs and a weakening labor market. I think we're heading for a recession unless things turn around quickly, which I'm not seeing any indication of.

I'm curious if we'll get TACO Trump, or if he'll double down on this?

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My guess is that this time even if there’s a TACO you can’t turn back the clock on everything that’s happened. The tariffs are mostly an on/off switch. You can’t unbomb infrastructure.

Or easily un-convince people who've been bombed that they need to hold nearby trade hostage for retribution/protection.

My understanding is that, until the hits on Tehrans oil storage sites yesterday, the oil infrastructure has been spared. Nothing that isn't easy to repair.

Ie the price increase we've seen so far os mostly pricing the closing of the staits and the risk of reduced production production is halted due to running out of storage (ie akin to a cpu "pipeline stall".

But Iran got hit badly yesterday, with tar raining on the capital. If Iran retaliates against infrastructure...

The US is not acting rationally on Iran, this is on top of a history of acting irrationally with regards to past treaties. The game theorists would tell you that Iran should impose costs for this in one way or another, the main avenue of which is economic costs. Iran may extend this cost imposition to US aligned states throughout the Gulf.

It's a mess with limited exit ramps, Iran can likely keep bombing their neighbors and shipping blocked for years if they so choose.

There was no urgency in the invasion of Iran. It was done partly because Israel wanted it, and partly as a convenient distraction. Nothing material had changed from the last decade. The US embassy was given instructions to get people out of Israel the day before it happened, and anyone who was paying attention knew exactly what that meant.

Everything that is happening now was publicly predicted and modelled at least a decade ago. Look at Shimon Peres's continual warnings to the world regarding Netanyahu. This was expected and shouldn't be regarded as something novel. Just something abhorrent.

If the wells have been throttled back or stopped. There can be issues when production is reduced (or even worse stopped), restarting & resuming the previous production rates can be very difficult and time consuming. There’s a lot of complex multi-phase physics that can prevent the restart. Sometimes wells, just don’t restart.

I hope that you are right and we are just filling the storage tanks and waiting for the straits to re-open, so the hit to the market is minimised.

Iran do seem to be losing but that doesn’t mean the US is winning. The US needs to get the oil/gas moving through the straits and on the market, otherwise there will be big hit at the gas pumps and other economic factors.

Producers have already been announcing force majure to legally stop production.

Qatar gas being the big one for LNG. It'll takes them two weeks to restart four to get to full production. So a tight LNG market has 20% of the world production out for three weeks.

Heating oil in UK from one of main suppliers, for delivery next week, has gone from 60p/L to 130p+/L in last 7 days

They asked Trump what he thought could go wrong. His only response was appointing a leader worse than the last. That took just over a week and now our $1b per day is going to skyrocket when troops are deployed. Trump has to focus on federalism of elections to stop from being nurtured in November. There was never a plan and he fractured his base. I am not sure how this helps average Americans. Perhaps we’ll have some conflict with Cuba soon and China enters the frame.

Sincerely hope he isn't nurtured.

Federalism is the opposite of federal control, which I think you mean.

Also, you probably mean neutered.

Proves I am not AI? You’re right, fighting allergies at the moment in a tub full of OTC concoctions.

Even if Trump goes Taco, Khamenei Jr won't accept. Remember the adversary also get a vote.

Mojtaba will be dead within a month. What would it say about the entire operation if they just backed off and let Khamenei’s son take over?

It would tell us that they are incompetent buffoons which is exactly what they are.

That it was a stupid operation with a predictably useless outcome. But we also said that about the whole invading Greenland stuff, and it ended like that. And about the war in Afghanistan. And I would presume, about the Vietnam war.

Trump will say he won and move on.

> Trump will say he won and move on.

Then Trump will move on and attack China maybe? Anyway, with Trump in office I expect to see more and more chaos coming.

Cuba is next

I imagine much of US/Israeli intel has been burned on the initial strike, and it's not that hard to hide someone in a bunker at the end of the day.

Seeme like Israel has very strong intel in Iran though. Not sure they got burned, they seem to have infiltrated deeply into Iran. Remains to be seen how it plays out in the end.

The US killed a lot of people in Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq and it didn't mean squat.

Are we just doomed to repeat this bullshit?

On some weird level of irony this might cause a huge green transition

Why care about oil when alternate fossil-fuel-free technologies have become mature? This could very well be the last straw to push many nations (except the U.S.) to massively buy Chinese solar panels and Chinese EVs to be oil independent.

Because policies are not made by rational decisions but by lobbyists...

That’s a United States phenomenon.

Chinese solar panels don’t help with plastics or industrial lubricants.

The amount of oil used for plastics or lubricants is insignificant compared to the use of oil as energy. In the United States, lubricants use ~0.5% of all oil, and all industrial feedstock about 1%.

Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good.

Insignificant is its own minima (its an absolute) and doesn't need qualification.

You're not from these parts, are you?

About 80% of oil is burned in some way for fuel.

What on earth does that mean?

It means the oil is being used for its heat content when combusted. Such heat may be used directly or be converted to mechanical work in a heat engine.

Exactly what it says? 80% of the oil extracted from the ground is burned. The other 20% is used to make things.

We burn 80% of the oil we take out of the ground. Oil production could drop 80% and we would not have to change anything other than demand for burning it.

There is not going to be any shortage of plastics in the medium term.

Shale oil and gas production in the US produces vast quantities of ethane as a byproduct. This ethane is cracked into ethylene, a feedstock for making plastic. There is an oversupply of the stuff.

The overabundance is a big part of why it's just not commercially viable to do much with recycled plastic. Places will practically give away the virgin material because they have to find someplace for it to go to keep producing other things.

He’ll taco when he sees the stock market tanking

genie is out of the bottle on this one

but will iran accept the taco? at this point, it seems like it may get ideological for them, and they play a different war (jihad) which would require diverting prolonged resources. we may not be able to simply just leave and revert to normal.

Israel is making the decisions here, there is no tacoing for them.

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