Diesel prices

Last week, Pres­i­dent Trump an­nounced that the Unit­ed States would be re­ceiv­ing diesel ship­ments from Rus­sia, a deal that would on­ly make sense if it were nec­es­sary to avert cat­a­stro­phe. For con­text, read­ers should un­der­stand that the diesel sup­ply is­sue is now so chaot­ic that the US is im­port­ing fu­el from Rus­sia, sus­pend­ing its pre­vi­ous sanc­tions regime in or­der to sta­bilise prices and fight in­fla­tion.

For his­tor­i­cal back­ground to help read­ers un­der­stand how baf­fling this news is, US sol­diers last fought troops of Russ­ian ori­gin, the Wag­n­er Group, at the Bat­tle of Khasham in Syr­ia in 2018, even though they were not Russ­ian mil­i­tary; the Wag­n­er Group works di­rect­ly for Vladimir Putin to give him plau­si­ble de­ni­a­bil­i­ty for covert ac­tions.

This is­sue is of rel­e­vance to Trinidad and To­ba­go, as ei­ther the State will have to spend huge sums of mon­ey buy­ing diesel on the glob­al mar­ket and pro­vid­ing it to the pri­vate sec­tor at sub­sidised rates, or the price of diesel will have to be in­creased. The ques­tions I at­tempt to an­swer in this col­umn will be: 1. What is diesel? 2. Why is it fun­da­men­tal­ly im­por­tant? 3. Why is the world ex­pe­ri­enc­ing diesel short­ages and price in­creas­es?