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Comment by xp84 | Hacker News Reader

> "a Global Fuel Crisis"

Does anyone else find this hyperbolic? Gas prices here in the US are up about 26% from their recent-past price -- it stayed in a very narrow range of about $3.20 for a year or two, and now is at $4.05.

A "FUEL CRISIS" is what you are seeing in Moscow right now. People lined up for miles and sometimes when you get to the front the delivery does not happen because the refinery got blown up. Or at least the 1970s oil crisis. A 26% bump in prices is a major annoyance, not a "crisis."

I would guess that the person who wrote this headline has some kind of a political agenda.

Did he describe it as a "fuel crisis" when gas prices rose from their previous ~2.80 baseline to the peak of $4.93 in June 2022, a 76% increase? Or was it not a crisis then for some reason?

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I'm not sure what you want. There is a global fuel crisis. Wikipedia calls it a "worldwide fuel crisis". Is this in dispute?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2026_Iran_war_fuel_crisis

It's just an odd choice on a page that's only about USA fuel prices. I wouldn't describe a 26% increase in any price as a ____ crisis. RAM and storage prices, now that's a crisis.

I believe OP's earnest statement that he's not trying to be political. I just think that propagandizing - if that was the motivation - would be dishonest by most definitions:

If one were just trying to boost Dems in the midterms by the classic "gas prices high -> loss for party in control" method, but they were saying "Inflation isn't that bad and gas prices are fine" during the 76% gas price spike in 2022, that's extreme bad faith.

And if one is implying "Fuel prices are higher now, therefore conflict with Iran is bad" I'd argue that's a shitty, cowardly, and selfish metric to base policy decisions on. Surely some battles are worth fighting because an enemy's behavior is too intolerable to allow, and gas prices being temporarily high is annoying, but not reason to capitulate.

26% increase on something that is priced into the price of everything else is huge. In comparison the RAM price surge is a big deal in the consumer market but not nearly as bad as the chip shortages a few years back for industrial use. Fuel consumption is not really elastic either. Most people don't really need a new PC, but if you can't afford gas you will end up jobless real quick.

It can also get a lot worse very quickly when countries' strategic reserves run dry.

> It's just an odd choice on a page that's only about USA fuel prices

I don't see why. There is a global fuel crisis. It is affecting prices in much of the world. This particular page is about those prices in the US. The page's title, "Tracking Costco Gas Prices During a Global Fuel Crisis", describes exactly and accurately what it is doing.

Sounds like you're the one making this political.

That's a fascinating article! I live in Viet Nam, and it seems a bit like the section about us is overblown though.

There are some short fuel queues these last few months (about a 2-5 minute wait), and a couple of the sketchier petrol stations did some price speculation then shut down. It's more or less business as usual over here though.

My weekly fuel costs went from 50k VND (about 2$) to 60k VND (about 2.50$). My commute is pretty typical for Ho Chi Minh City. A lot (not all) of our taxis and gig workers also switched to electric vehicles some time ago.

Shipping costs, and the price of imported or fresh produce did go up noticeably though. Or the quality went down.

Hi! Absolutely zero political agenda here, just someone wanting to track the price of fuel.

While Wikipedia isn't always to be trusted (everyone knows that), the situation has been widely described as a crisis: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2026_Strait_of_Hormuz_crisis.

Just want to clear that up that the jargon is selected specifically from a general understanding and not one from a political skew!

I also wasn't tracking fuel prices back in 2022, otherwise I probably would have included similar dialog given the nature of what caused the prices to rise.

> Did he describe it as a "fuel crisis" when gas prices rose from their previous ~2.80 baseline to the peak of $4.93 in June 2022, a 76% increase? Or was it not a crisis then for some reason?

Ah, that's the "both sides" I was expecting this comment to lead to! Right after downplaying the self-inflicted, but nonetheless global, crisis. The cherry on top is pretending there's a double standard that was broken.

At the gas stations near me, at the start of 2025, I could get a gallon of gas for around $1.85. The stations near me are now up to around $4.30, a 250% increase. I don't know if I'd quite call it a crisis, but certainly it's a major shock.

In the US there are structural reasons fuel shocks have less of an effect here

Tbf, the U.S isn't the globe.

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