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Comment by mullingitover | Hacker News Reader

The fun part of this is the crack spread doesn't care about the relatively low price that crude is selling for. Refined petroleum is going for eye-watering prices, and will continue to do so for a very long time, even if peace breaks out tomorrow.

Also seems pretty doubtful that oil prices would drop even if the war ended, given that everyone is going to be scrambling to refill their reserves for a very long time. On top of that, a lot of wells have been capped, which is a destructive act, so it'll take years to repair the supply.

The real winners will be everyone who destroyed their own oil demand. I went out and bought an EV in May to replace an ICE vehicle, and the other car in the household hasn't burned through a full tank in the months since. They may have killed the EV subsidies in the US but they just went out and created a huge regressive tax on everyone not driving an EV.

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> The real winners will be everyone who destroyed their own oil demand. I went out and bought an EV in May to replace an ICE vehicle, and the other car in the household hasn't burned through a full tank in the months since. They may have killed the EV subsidies in the US but they just went out and created a huge regressive tax on everyone not driving an EV.

LOL, I sold my car and bought an e-bike.

I catch the bus, so I'm completely independent of any fuel shortages because buses are... hang on... damn.

(Actually most of the buses here are electric, as are the trains, but yeah, there's still an awful lot of stuff run on diesel that affects you indirectly).

>the other car in the household hasn't burned through a full tank in the months

My gas car was filled in November and has half a tank. EV's are such a better experience and so much cheaper to operate[^1] that most owners don't want to go back to gas.

[1] - dependent on one's access to inexpensive electricity. In the U.S. using DC fast chargers is often more expensive than gasoline.

> household hasn't burned through a full tank in the months since. They may have killed the EV subsidies in the US but they just went out and created a huge regressive tax on everyone not driving an EV.

Modern fuel blends are usually 10-15% ethanol. Ethanol is an alcohol, and thus is able to absorb ambient water from the air into the gasoline solution. Gasoline stored for a long time will generally increase in water content (if I am not mistaken lol), thus it maybe for future reference, try to avoid ethanol based fuels if possible if you're not gonna be using your ICE car. It's like how people who store their motorcycles or fancy performance cars during the winter leave it without fuel, or add a fuel stabilizer.

Will the tradespeople (contractor) crowd turn up in this thread and cheer on the oil companies for making good money, damn any effect on the rest of the economy? ;)

> Will the tradespeople (contractor) crowd turn up in this thread and cheer on the oil companies for making good money

Huh?

There was a thread about data-centers hiring trades for $$$ ad everyone was cheering and anyone who asked tough questions like "why is supply so inelastic and is that a good thing?" got screeched at by ideologies. He's poking fun at that.

The "(contractor)" bit is because it's usually not the guy doing the actual work making the big bucks. That guy's making marginally more. It's the guy billing that guy out who's seeing the lions share of the huge price increases.

How many of those people who got paid are complaining about it? Less demand is still more than zero.

> the guy billing that guy out who's seeing the lions share

The trades are pretty flat. Plenty of contractors become millionaires before their white-collar analogs, even if you ignore the opportunity cost of college.

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