Now, the “professional” American media is finally awakening to the fact there is a severe diesel fuel crisis looming, which will have a devastating impact on the nation’s economy.

Diesel stockpiles in the U.S. are reportedly at their lowest point since 2008, with only enough fuel for a 25-day supply, according to a recent report from Bloomberg. Demand is also said to be at its highest point since 2007, creating a dangerous supply/demand combination that’s causing spikes in pricing. The Biden administration called the nationwide diesel supply “unacceptably low” and is looking at all options to build up the national supply to help reduce prices.

According to U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), the average price of diesel is at $5.34 per gallon. That’s an increase of $1.67 per gallon, compared to this time last year. The area getting hit the hardest is New England, where people burn diesel fuel for heat more than anywhere else in the country.

There, stockpiles of diesel fuel are a third of what they normally are at this time of the year. However, the highest cost of diesel fuel is in California, where the average cost is almost $6.50 per gallon, an increase of almost $2.00 per gallon over this time last year.

It’s also a massive price increase over the average cost of gasoline in the U.S. According to the EIA, the average price of gasoline in the U.S. is $3.87 per gallon, with the most expensive region also being California, at $5.84 per gallon.

I must point out that the “25-day” supply is only if no new diesel is pumped, and that won’t be the case. However, shortages and steep price increases will strain the economy, and Americans will have to choose between essential quality-of-life products in ways they have not seen since the 1970s stagflation.

Four reasons have been identified for the current low levels of supply. The first two involve distillates at low levels, and now the refineries that produce them are doing maintenance.

The following two are longer-term problems:

U.S. refinery capacity has fallen in the past few years as several unprofitable refineries were closed. So, that’s a new factor that has appeared in the past couple of years.

But the primary reason is the cutoff of Russian imports. Prior to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the U.S. was importing nearly 700,000 barrels per day (BPD) of petroleum and petroleum products. Most of those imports were finished products and refinery inputs that boosted distillate supplies in the U.S.

Because our elite media has little interest in anything outside of the corridors between New York City and Washington DC (or its West Coast equivalent between Los Angles and San Francisco), it has not been monitoring the situation until recently. It is now dawning on “journalists” how serious the problem is.

“It’s not a thing that gets the same attention from the public as gas does. Most people don’t use diesel and they don’t see the relevancy, but it is something that infiltrates every nook and cranny of inflation because everything moves around the country in the waterways, on the rails or on the roads, with diesel powering it,” said [Tom Kloza, dean of U.S. oil analysts at Oil Price Information Service].

Diesel is used in farming, construction, heating and transportation, with trains, trucks and ships all running on it.

“The economy runs on diesel,” said Cinquegrana. “Think about everything you buy in the store, it got there by trains and trucks. Construction, etc. High diesel prices could slow economic activity down. Prices have come down from the all-time highs in mid-June, but not enough to ease concerns.”

Wait until the press discovers that the root cause of the diesel shortage is the scary, Franken-science of “climate crisis” drama it publishes, which is narrative-driven rather than based on actual data. Some countries are warming up to reality and returning to reliable, efficient, and, if properly managed, environmentally sensible fossil fuels.

Saad al-Kaabi, Energy Minister of Qatar, says, “Many countries particularly in Europe which had been strong advocates of green energy and carbon-free future have made a sudden and sharp U-turn. Today, coal burning is once again on the rise reaching its highest levels since 2014.”

They are right. Global coal demand will reach an historic high in 2022, similar to 2013’s record levels. According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), “Global coal consumption is forecast to rise by 0.7 percent in 2022 to 8 billion tons…. Coal consumption in the European Union is expected to rise by seven percent in 2022 on top of last year’s 14 percent jump.”

Coal will continue to be a sought-after energy source as “rising gas prices after 2030 will make existing coal-fired generation more economic,” the IEA says. Global energy demand will grow by 47 percent from now through 2050, and oil is expected to be the major source of energy.