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Gulf Refinery Crisis Is a Reminder of Why People Are Switching to EVs
France’s Finance Minister Roland Lescure confirmed Wednesday that between 30 and 40% of Gulf refining capacity has been damaged or destroyed, pulling roughly 11 million barrels a day off global oil markets. He warned restoration could take up to three years for the most damaged facilities, with several months just to get the urgently shuttered ones back online.
That’s a significant chunk of global supply, and it’s going to show up at the pump.
The conversation around EVs has always centered on range, charging, and upfront cost. What gets talked about less is the other side of that ledger: gasoline pricing is tied to global supply chains in ways that are completely outside your control. A disruption of this scale is a reminder that the cost to fill a tank isn’t really a fixed number.
Electricity prices fluctuate too, but they’re driven by different forces and tend to be a lot more stable month to month. For EV owners, this week’s news is mostly background noise. For anyone still deciding, it’s a useful data point on the value of predictable energy costs at the household level.
Disruptions like this don’t last forever, but they do have a way of sharpening the math on a decision people were already thinking about.
The state of geopolitics is one of the reasons why I got an EV. Many other reasons, but I lived through the OPEC oil embargo of the 70s with long lines at gas stations. Plus my Model Y will literally outrun any of my old muscle cars.
Have to do math now at the pump. Basing on how many gallons to put into my car, like 1 or 3 gallons to last me for the week. Luckily my daily commute is an average of 20 miles, but makes want to get a 2nd EV as a daily and use the ICE car for just family roadtrips.
I don’t even track energy prices either since I have solar.