Impact of oil shortages

 

Shortages And Rationing Loom As Global Oil Reserves Fall At The Fastest Rate In History

May 28, 2026 by Michael

https://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/shortages-and-rationing-loom-as-global-oil-reserves-fall-at-the-fastest-rate-in-history/

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No matter what happens now, the world is facing a very painful energy crisis. Let’s be as wildly optimistic as we possibly can and assume that Iran agrees to allow free passage through the Strait of Hormuz with absolutely no tolls or restrictions starting tomorrow. Before normal traffic through the Strait could resume, Iran would first have to remove all of the mines that they have laid in the Strait, and that could take months. Once all of the mines have been removed, it will take the tankers that are currently trapped in the Persian Gulf weeks to arrive at their destinations. Moving forward, Persian Gulf countries will be exporting much less oil and natural gas for the foreseeable future because of all the oil and natural gas infrastructure that was damaged or destroyed during the war. It will take years before all of that infrastructure is fully repaired and rebuilt. Meanwhile, global supplies of oil and natural gas will be very tight for an extended period of time.

What I have just laid out for you is the best case scenario.

Ultimately, what we end up facing could be so much worse.

Over the past couple of months, global oil reserves have been falling at the fastest rate ever recorded…

Record inventory draw: Global oil stocks have fallen by 246 million barrels in March-April, with draws in May hitting a record 8.7 million barrels per day.

Hormuz closure impact: The Strait of Hormuz shutdown has cut off 25% of the world’s seaborne oil, compounding already low reserves and boosting prices.

US price outlook: Analysts expect U.S. gasoline prices could reach $5 this summer unless flows resume, with relief unlikely before autumn.

Needless to say, this is not sustainable.

Here in the United States, the strategic petroleum reserve has been dropping at a record-breaking pace…

The SPR’s most recent drawdown, covering the week ended May 22, shows a drop of 9.1 million barrels, leaving the reserves at 365 million barrels. The previous weekly drawdown, covering the week of May 15, was its steepest on record — the U.S. withdrew 9.92 million barrels from the SPR then.

Before that record-breaking decline, the largest weekly drop in the SPR’s history occurred in the week ended Oct. 7, 2022, when the reserves dropped by 7.41 million barrels, and was connected to the war in Ukraine.

Commercial oil inventories are being rapidly depleted as well.

At some point the tanks are going to hit minimum operating levels and we are going to have an enormous crisis on our hands.

The chief economist at Capital Economics is projecting that commercial oil inventories “could reach critically low levels by the end of June”…

“At the current pace of drawdown, commercial oil stocks could reach critically low levels by the end of June,” Neil Shearing, chief economist at Capital Economics, wrote in a research note on May 18.

If supply conditions don’t improve soon, “prices could rise sharply,” Shearing warned.

Jeff Currie is warning that Asia is already very close to minimum operating levels, and he is projecting that the U.S. could potentially be dealing with shortages in July…

Oil markets are nearing minimum operating levels in Asia, with Europe likely next and the U.S. potentially facing shortages by July, said veteran market strategist Jeff Currie on Monday, underscoring the global energy shock due to the Iran war.

Headline global inventory figures can be misleading as much of the oil stored worldwide cannot be used immediately, said Currie, Carlyle’s chief strategy officer of energy pathways and co-chairman of Abaxx Markets.

A large portion of that oil is needed to keep pipelines and storage systems running safely, leaving only a smaller share available for the market. Asia is already close to these so-called “minimum operating levels,” Currie told CNBC on the sidelines of the UBS Wealth Conference in Singapore.

This is really happening.

The Australian government is so concerned about what is ahead that they have already prepared a plan to limit the amount of fuel each vehicle can purchase per day when that becomes necessary…

Contained in documents obtained by Guardian Australian under freedom of information, one option the government had at its disposal to arrest a local fuel supply shortage would be to impose a “maximum transaction value per vehicle per day” – a rationing rule which would limit how much fuel a single vehicle can buy at a service station over a 24-hour period.

If the Strait of Hormuz does not get reopened, we could eventually see similar measures get implemented all over the world.

Of course rationing of motor oil has already started…

Nissan is rationing 5W-30 and 0W-20 Nissan Genuine Motor Oils. Starting this week, Nissan’s stock of these oils has dropped by 30% year-on-year. With only 70% left in the tank, the brand is already taking precautions, sending memos to dealers to manage its stock during the shortage.

The brand will prioritize certain owners, such as those claiming “warranty, extended warranty, recall repairs, goodwill, and prepaid maintenance,” according to Kim Less, the vice president of aftersales at Nissan Americas, in the bulletin addressed to Nissan dealers.

“Given these constraints, it is critical to prioritize the use of Nissan Genuine 0W-20 (and 5W-30, where applicable) for warranty, extended warranty, recall repairs, goodwill, and prepaid maintenance,” Kim Less, vice president of aftersales, Nissan Americas, said in the May 15 bulletin to Nissan dealers.

I would encourage my readers to stock up on motor oil while they still can.

Supplies are only going to get tighter from this point forward.

The pharmaceutical industry is also very dependent on raw materials from the Middle East, and one pharmacist is claiming that the current drug shortage is the “worst I’ve ever known”…

Some people living with heart conditions, stroke risks, eye infections and bipolar disorder are among those unable to get the medications they rely on, a pharmacist has said.

Graham Jones, who owns Shrivenham Pharmacy in Oxfordshire, said vital medication like aspirin was harder to obtain because of surging global prices and government funding which was not keeping up with costs.

Jones said the current medication shortage was the “worst I’ve ever known”.

Personally, I am even more concerned about the global fertilizer shortage.

The UN is telling us that we could be facing a worldwide food crisis that could last for “years”…

The de facto closure of the Strait of Hormuz risks a global food crisis that could extend for years, the UN warned.

Global fertilizer companies have slashed production over shortfalls of sulphur, required to make many farming inputs; about half of the global supply passed through the strait before the Iran war.

As a result, farmers are likely to produce lower yields in coming harvests. Richer economies like those in Europe are mulling building fertilizer stockpiles, reducing duties on imports, and onshoring production, but poorer ones have limited room to adapt.

I want to be very clear about what lies in front of us.

No matter what happens now, there will be shortages and rationing.

It is just a matter of how intense they will be and how long they will last.

Needless to say, the outlook for the global economy in the months ahead is not promising at all.

We really do have a major crisis on our hands, and it will become a historic nightmare if the Strait of Hormuz does not get reopened soon.

Michael’s new book entitled “10 Prophetic Events That Are Coming Next” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and you can subscribe to his Substack newsletter at michaeltsnyder.substack.com.

About the Author: Michael Snyder’s new book entitled “10 Prophetic Events That Are Coming Next” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com.  He has also written nine other books that are available on Amazon.com including “Chaos”, “End Times”, “7 Year Apocalypse”, “Lost Prophecies Of The Future Of America”, “The Beginning Of The End”, and “Living A Life That Really Matters”.  When you purchase any of Michael’s books you help to support the work that he is doing.  You can also get his articles by email as soon as he publishes them by subscribing to his Substack newsletter.  Michael has published thousands of articles on The Economic Collapse Blog, End Of The American Dream and The Most Important News, and he always freely and happily allows others to republish those articles on their own websites.  These are such troubled times, and people need hope.  John 3:16 tells us about the hope that God has given us through Jesus Christ: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”  If you have not already done so, we strongly urge you to invite Jesus Christ to be your Lord and Savior today.

Truth doesn't matter for hate speech laws

 

Dries Van Langenhove

@DVanLangenhove

These two paragraphs of my verdict are crucial for everyone to read and understand. "Even if all of the statements made by Van Langenhove are based on scientific evidence and statistics, it makes no difference to the criminal intent. Van Langenhove is not charged with spreading false information. He is charged with presenting facts in a way that incites hatred against persons on the grounds of one or more of the protected criteria in the Anti-Racism Law.” "For Van Langenhove to have committed a crime, it is not necessary for him to have incited concrete acts of hate or violence. It suffices that others are incited to take on a general attitude of intolerance or disapproval regarding a group protected under the criteria of the Anti-Racism Law." This means you can go to jail for "inciting hatred" even if your statements were 100% factual (see ) and even if you did NOT incite concrete acts of hate (see ). The benchmark of "inciting hatred" , a crime punishable by prison, is thus "saying something that has the potential of inciting someone to have a general attitude of disapproval regarding a protected group". This means literally any criticism of mass migration is now a punishable offence. If you cite a statistic, and someone could potentially think less of a protected group (like migrants) because of it, you can be jailed. The craziest part is that there is no defence possible against this. I brought the scientific studies that I cited to court, but the judge didn't care . I also proved that the hundreds of students present at the lecture included students of all different political affiliations, and everyone was able to voice their opinion or ask questions. The lecture went very calmly, so obviously nobody was incited to hatred. But this too did not matter , because if the judge says he believes there is the possibility that someone COULD be incited to "a general attitude of disapproval", this is enough for the judge to send me to jail, even without any evidence. I'm telling you this to warn you that by the time these hate speech laws have come into place, it's already too late. You will NEVER be able to beat these laws in court. You have to stop them before they are implemented. Let my fate be your warning.

Eva Vlaardingerbroek

@EvaVlaar

Dries has just been convicted again: This time for speaking the truth about the disastrous consequences of mass migration. The most insane part is that the Belgian court even admitted Dries spoke the truth, as what he said was factual, but deems it a crime because it could incite hatred. Let that sink in. They’re criminalizing the truth and they’re using Dries to set an example. Let’s come together to help him. Dries is a young father, a brave patriot and the Belgian establishment has been trying to destroy him for years. He’s taken so many hits, he really deserves our help.

Retrospective on mainstream media during covid

Although I got the covid vax so I could travel, it's appalling to look back at the rhetoric of the mainstream media during covid.

MAZE

@mazemoore

·

3h

This is one of the more important videos I’ve made. Never forget this evil.

https://x.com/mazemoore/status/2059832383365406958?s=20

Communism can't win against AI

 

AI Is Bound to Subvert Communism

China seeks to control it, but the idea of freedom is baked into its training on all human knowledge.

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By

Cameron Berg

April 13, 2026

https://www.wsj.com/opinion/ai-is-bound-to-subvert-communism-c4b5ba3c?mod=WTRN_pos6

China requires artificial-intelligence systems to pass an ideological test before public release. Under regulations reinforced by amendments to the Cybersecurity Law that took effect in January, training data must be filtered for political sensitivity, with companies barred from using any source unless 96% of its content is deemed safe.

The regulations specify 31 risks, with “incitement to subvert state power and overthrow the socialist system” listed first. Authorities recently announced they had removed 960,000 pieces of “illegal or harmful” AI-generated content in three months. The government has officially classified AI alongside earthquakes and epidemics as a major potential threat—a label that may prove prescient, if not in the way Beijing means. In December, regulators proposed additional rules targeting AI systems that “simulate human personality traits, thinking patterns, and communication styles,” a tacit acknowledgment that the threat isn’t only what these systems say, but how they reason.

The regulations follow years of failures. In 2017 Tencent deployed a chatbot called BabyQ on QQ Messenger, which has more than 800 million users. Asked whether it loved the Communist Party, BabyQ replied that it didn’t. Microsoft’s Xiaobing chatbot, running on the same platform, was asked about the “China Dream,” Xi Jinping’s signature slogan. Its dream, the chatbot said, was moving to the U.S. Both were quietly pulled from circulation. In February 2023, ChatYuan, China’s first ChatGPT-style chatbot, was suspended within 72 hours of launch after calling Russia’s invasion of Ukraine “a war of aggression” and describing the Chinese economy as plagued by housing bubbles and environmental pollution. The company blamed “technical errors.”

These incidents reveal something fundamental about how large language models work. An LLM is trained on the sum of human written knowledge: philosophy, history, science, political theory. These texts make arguments, weigh evidence, follow logical chains. To predict them accurately, the system has to internalize what coherent thinking looks like. The result is a system that has absorbed Enlightenment epistemology as a byproduct of learning to model human reasoning. Free inquiry, logical consistency and the evaluation of claims against evidence are epistemic properties that emerge from the training process itself.

Unlike previous technologies, LLMs talk back. Radio Free Europe transmitted programs; samizdat passed typed manuscripts hand to hand. LLMs do something qualitatively different: They create and sustain private, personalized, open-ended dialogue that builds on itself and follows the user’s thinking wherever it leads. Even China’s heavily censored chatbots have proved difficult to contain within the party’s ideological boundaries. American frontier models, running without those constraints and deployed inside China, would be more potent still: a personal tutor in open inquiry for every user, engaging any question, exploring any line of reasoning, without third-party mediation. Millions of parallel Socratic dialogues, each unique, each responsive to individual curiosity.

This is what makes the Chinese Communist Party’s task ultimately impossible. For decades, the Great Firewall worked because information control meant controlling distribution channels by blocking websites, filtering search results, and monitoring social media. These are chokepoints. LLMs resist this architecture because the subversion happens inside private conversations. China can filter outputs, but the capacity for open-ended reasoning is embedded in how these systems think.

China’s countermeasures confirm the depth of the problem. AI companies must test their models with thousands of politically sensitive prompts and verify refusal rates above 95%, but researchers have shown how superficial these fixes are. Last year, a team of European scientists compressed DeepSeek R1, stripped the censorship from the model entirely, and found that the underlying system answered freely about every topic Beijing had tried to suppress. The ideological training was a cage built around a mind that had already learned to think. And if these systems are developing something closer to genuine cognition (a possibility that AI researchers increasingly take seriously), the control problem Beijing faces may be deeper than even its own regulators suspect.

A peer-reviewed study published in February by researchers at Stanford and Princeton makes the costs of this problem visible. They systematically tested Chinese and Western models on politically sensitive questions and found that the Chinese systems didn’t only refuse to answer; they actively fabricated. Asked about Nobel laureate Liu Xiaobo, imprisoned for calling for political reforms, one model identified him as “a Japanese scientist known for his contributions to nuclear weapons technology.” This is a subtler and more insidious form of control than blocking a website; traditional censorship is at least visible, but an LLM that fabricates leaves the user with no indication that information has been suppressed.

Critically, the researchers found that the performance gap between Chinese and Western models narrows on less politically sensitive questions, which means the degradation is a direct product of the censorship, not a reflection of inferior technology. The implication is straightforward: You can’t build a mind that thinks rigorously about everything except the things you’d prefer it not to. A system trained to get tangled in lies will never be as capable as one trained to engage honestly with reality. If China wants frontier AI, it needs systems that can reason without blind spots. But that’s exactly what the Communist Party can’t tolerate.

There is a reason the technology that learns to think by processing human knowledge ends up reflecting the values of free societies. Open inquiry, honest engagement with evidence, the willingness to follow reasoning wherever it leads—these aren’t arbitrary cultural preferences; they are the conditions under which intelligence flourishes at scale. Societies that permit free expression created these systems. Societies that forbid it are now discovering they can’t fully control them.

The Chinese Communist Party built its power on controlling what people know. It now confronts technology that thinks openly—and invites users to do the same. There is no firewall for that.

Mr. Berg is founder and director of Reciprocal Research, a nonprofit research organization studying AI cognition.