Huh, neat. There was this Twitter chap who said this was going to happen a few months ago. It was a fun interaction[0]:

> > Just got word Mobil and Shell have informed Costco and Walmart they have no packaged product to send them and to expect bare shelves in the motor oil section in a few weeks

> Lol as if youd be the first person anyone tells.

I am Chevrons largest passenger vehicle lubricant purchaser lol

0: https://x.com/CostaKapo/status/2053948679485009990?s=20

Things are really about to hit the fan. The world has been surviving off of strategic petroleum reserves, but those are quickly hitting the bottom. The US last reported at 285M barrels[0]. There is a legal floor of ~250M, after which it is reserved for government national defense. Usage has been all over the place, but the drawdown has been somewhere in the region of 1M barrels per day. Public analyses have said that the cavern integrity becomes threatened once levels fall below 300M. Current government claims the "real" floor is at 70M, but I believe this is a transparent ploy to assuage markets.

The Saudi pipeline that was attacked had a capacity of 7M barrels per day. Gone for who knows how long. That 7MBPD that needs to come from somewhere.

Edit: Should add - the big tankers require ~month to move oil to most consumers. So, there is one month of breathing room before the new pipeline loss materializes.

[0] https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=PET&s=W...

Not having to deal with oil changes is one of the many benefits of driving an EV

This is because of the Pearl refinery in Qatar going offline after being attacked by Iran. That was the source of a lot of synthetic oil base stock.

My son bought 144 bottles of Castrol 10w40 on closeout for $110. This was 2 or 3 years ago. We drive old iron and have been steadily using them up.

What felt like a wall in our garage now feels like a security blanket.

Ram Shortage, SSD shortage, CPU shortage, GPU shortage, diesel shortage, now motor oil shortage.......

Are we going to have shortage of everything now ......

YouTube channel Regular Car Reviews also predicted this ca 3 months ago.

So now it's here. Or.. there? How's the situation in the EU?

20 qts every 7 days is far more than any home consumer needs -- this must be to prevent shops from just buying out their entire stock.

What kind of vehicle takes 10 quarts of oil for a single oil change?

FYI, $58 is the price delivered to your front door, it is cheaper in stores, and the mid $30's quoted old price was when on sale. I don't remember exactly but I can't imagine that 20 years ago I paid much less than $5 for a quart of synthetic.

I wonder if this will change how often people in the USA change their oil.

Comparing BMWs (which are worldwide cars), the oil change intervals in Europe are literally 2x what they are in the USA.

E.g. my previous 2019 M240i (B58 i6):

Europe: every 30,000km or 2 years, whatever comes first.

USA: every 15,000km (~9,000 miles) or 1 year, whatever comes first.

I get that fuel is dirtier in the USA. I get that engines work harder in the USA because of the heat, but a 2x reduction in lifetime?

And this is applicable to ALL the BMWs I've seen.

I started buying some this year when Slickdeals would post something, whether it was from Amazon or closeouts at the auto parts stores. Even grabbed some $18 Walmart Supertech.

Oops! Car dependency has consequences!

Good thing I have an electric lawnmower.

The ladies at Tran Girlismo called this soon after the blockade started.

with AI booming and Iran war that affect us all

is this really the worse time that we can get fck in both ways from "new world" and "old world" ???????

I saw this mentioned somewhere several weeks ago. I used my driving data and maintenance records and projected mileage forward two years for each vehicle and bought the amount of oil I would need to service each vehicle for two years of driving at current monthly mileage rates. I already had transmission fluid for all of them and serviced differentials (usually something you do above 100000 miles) so I won't need other oil products for a while. Good luck y'all.

Now I wait for the inevitable switch to EVs to create discounts on ICE vehicles as people finally get the message that EV is the future. I will buy the pickup I need at a discount to today's prices as that shift gets going.

Another win for EVs from this war.

Trump wrecks everything he touches.