Gas Pumps run out of diesel
By Saghir Hussain ·
When Diesel Disappears, Policy Is on the Ration
When diesel vanishes from the pump, it isn't a supply hiccup — it's a policy failure made visible by the United States - with the current President of the United States and his direction of policy. I've watched the footage from Florida, from the US East Coast, from California's Central Valley, Iran, Saudi Arabia, The GCC countries, Iraq, Kuwait and more.
The American diesel shortage is not a mystery. It is the predictable result of underinvestment, regulatory fragmentation, and political cowardice. And the bill always gets paid by the same people it was never meant to hit. With The US national reserves were low with Ex POTUS who never did anything. The current POTUS who drained the reserves to balance the international markets.
Why the Pumps Run Dry
The causes are well-documented, even if policymakers pretend otherwise. The Colonial Pipeline cyberattack of 2021 exposed how fragile the country's fuel infrastructure genuinely is — one cyber intrusion caused real, physical shortages across the American Southeast, and recovery took weeks. That was a cyber-security failure dressed up as a natural disaster.
Beyond that, refinery capacity has been stagnant or declining for over a decade. The US Gulf Coast still refines the most fuel of any region, but ageing infrastructure and deliberate regulatory walls limit output. Seasonal demand spikes — summer driving season, winter heating oil needs in the Northeast — routinely strain a system with no strategic surplus to fall back on.
The war
Then there is the environmental angle. California's CARB fuel standards effectively isolate its fuel supply from the rest of the country, meaning any disruption within the state has no easy fix. Environmental regulations, while necessary in my view, have been implemented without parallel investment in alternative supply lines. The result is self-inflicted scarcity.
The State Lottery of Diesel Prices
What you pay for diesel in the US depends more on your zip code than on global oil markets — and that is indefensible. As a general pattern, drivers in California, Hawaii, Washington, and New York face the highest diesel prices, often driven well above the national average by combination of heavy state taxes, strict environmental mandates, and limited refinery access. California diesel has frequently hovered around or above five dollars a gallon.
At the opposite end, states like Texas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, and Alabama benefit from proximity to Gulf Coast refineries and lower fuel taxes. Diesel there can sit significantly below the national average, sometimes by a dollar or more per gallon. This isn't market variation — it is geography and politics dictating who bears the cost of America's energy appetite. A trucker in Louisiana pays less because a refinery sits down the road; a commuter in New Jersey pays more because policy and population density collude against them.
Who's Really Accountable?
Republican politicians blame Biden. Democrats blame markets. Both are avoiding the question. The real accountability sits with a federal energy infrastructure that has not been meaningfully updated in a generation, and with state regulators who impose mandates without funding the alternatives.
The Biden administration's cancellation of the Keystone XL pipeline and its restrictions on federal land leasing were genuine supply-side constraints — I've argued that myself. But so too have Republican administrations gutted pipeline safety enforcement and blocked emissions standards that would push efficiency. Neither party has treated diesel infrastructure as what it is: a national security issue.
Here's the uncomfortable truth — analysis suggests the US has the refining capacity to meet its own diesel demand, but only if the system functions without political sabotage from either direction. The shortages we see are not about scarcity. They are about choices.
So tell me: if a country that produces more fuel than it consumes can't keep its pumps full, what exactly is the excuse?