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
If you follow motor oil geek on YouTube, they've started changing the formulations of the premium oils months ago and that's not going to change until 2028 when more American supply comes online
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.
> There is a legal floor of ~250M, after which it is reserved for government national defense.
There is no "government national defense floor". As far as I can tell, this originates from someone misreading the SPR drawdown laws and then a bunch of people parroting it. The ~250M "floor" (really 252.4M) only applies for SPR drawdowns that aren't required by a severe energy supply interruption or to meet US obligations under the international energy program. Deciding what qualifies as a "severe energy supply interruption" is left up to the president. Essentially there's nothing stopping the president from emptying the reserve entirely. See sections d and h here: https://uscode.house.gov/view.xhtml?req=(title%3A42+section%...
I'd love to see someone try to refute this as the obvious outcome given every decision Trump has made, especially in his second term where he has far less sane babysitters around him.
This is the "If we stop testing right now, we’d have very few cases, if any" guy.
This is the guy calling for steep rate cuts in the midst of a serious inflation problem.
This is the guy that sabotages solar and wind power, intent on keeping us on oil and "clean coal" (lmao).
He's 80 years old and a malignant narcissist, he doesn't give a single fuck what happens to anyone after he's dead (and he knows that'll be pretty soon) as long as he gets what he thinks he wants today.
The oil that lubricates the combustion chambers and pistons gets burnt and filled with nasty combustion goop. An impressive amount of cleverness goes to minimizing this, but the oil that sees the combustion chambers still goes bad at many times the rate of any other lubricant.
Even on an ICE vehicle, you have transmission oil and differential oil and lubricants in your air conditioning compressor and brake hydraulics and grease smeared on CV joints and door mechanisms and pretty much everything else that moves. But you still talk about "changing THE oil" and mean the oil-that-sees-combustion specifically (along with, typically, the filter that fights the constant battle of getting the worst combustion products out of it). I personally think that makes it fair to say "EVs don't require oil changes" because even though they don't magically eliminate the other lubrication systems or the need to maintain them, they do eliminate the one that is so much more obnoxious than the rest that we commonly called it "THE oil change" before this was ever a debate.
There is oil for the gearbox, but there's no scheduled maintenance for it at all, and in practice, people regularly get hundreds of thousands of miles without ever needing to think about it.
It does, plenty of things inside the EV require all kinds of oils, just the maintenance cycle isn't gallons and gallons every x months. You are looking at years.
I got service centers trying to rotate my tires every 3k miles because "ev". The oil change as well, oh you need to change oil every 5k because... because why?
They do have some gearbox oil that is usually considered to last a lifetime but some sources advise changing it every 100k miles or so. This is analogous to transmission fluid in an ICEV.
The seal between the piston and the cylinder isn't perfect, so when the engine runs combustion products will mix with the oil, making the oil eventually unusable. That's why ICE engines meed oil changes so often.
Correct. ~140k miles on my 2018 Model S, tires, wipers and wiper fluid, and one battery pack heater replaced (deprecated, no longer used in newer builds) are all that have been done. Motors are lubricated at manufacture and sealed for life.
I’m still on the original brakes and rotors luckily but will likely need to replace them soon from corrosion and warping versus consumption. Which is very cool imho.
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.
I realize the shortages you enumerated have different reasons , but a highly respectable French engineer, Jean-Marc Jancovici , has been repeating for years that we are heading into an inevitable age of "degrowth".
It is not an "if". It is now inevitable.
He is very pro alternative sources of energy but he clearly explains nothing can replace petroleum right now. Petroleum is used to build everything. Gas for your car. Your clothes. Plastic bags. Our beloved computers. Everything uses petroleum one way or another.
We are doomed.
I’m just happy I’m too old to go through all the bad times that are coming.
Most often diesel engines (I used to be an auto mechanic). Even passenger car diesels can take 10+ quarts. Gas engines typically take less oil but big engines can still take 5-7+.
But that's an inline engine, right? I think a model based on engine layout, displacement/cylinder, and cylinder count might be quite good at predicting the necessary oil (and will tell you when your car uses a bit too much compared to everyone else).
Lots of people haul things. The US is huge compared to what most people expect. Big trucks can be a necessity depending on what you do for a living/your way of life.
The vast majority of pickups are not actually used for workmen like purposes.
In fact, as carmakers have started pivoting more towards selling them to affluent suburban households, the usable cargo volume has decreased over time despite increasing size.
Things can be hauled just fine in an estate, saloon, or even a hatchback. European camper vans are regularly hauled by tiny Golfs or Polos with barely a litre of engine displacement and a hundred kilowatts of power.
Americans just buy much bigger vehicles than necessary.
>Big trucks can be a necessity depending on what you do for a living/your way of life.
You might have missed this part. My round bales are 1000kg, and the field gets wet. How do I move the goats? How do I pull someone out of that ditch where the sign says 15mph but every winter they slide through my fence?
Right, but seeing trucks obviously not set up for towing or hauling is becoming more common nowadays. With the level of luxury trims available on some trucks now, it's obvious that they aren't a necessity anymore.
This is on top of trucks prioritizing 4 door models and taking bites out of the truck bed
Same trend here in NZ. People buying utes/trucks just because they want, not because they need. They're not as big as the American F150s etc, more a Toyota Hilux or Ford Ranger.
And they're often driven by reckless road ragers, often modified with uncertified suspension, bush lights turned on at night blinding oncoming traffic, and wheels extending past the fender flares. These vehicles are often financed to the hilt, so spending money on certifying the modifications is out of the picture, so a lot of these are not legal to drive on the roads.
Lots of people haul things everywhere. Driving a truck as your main vehicle because you haul something twice a month is ridiculously wasteful, of money foremost.
I have a small trailer, rent a bigger one or van when needed.
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
Suddenly I don't feel so stupid anymore for having a supply of oil on my garage shelf that rivals Elaine hoarding contraceptive sponges in Seinfeld.
If you follow motor oil geek on YouTube, they've started changing the formulations of the premium oils months ago and that's not going to change until 2028 when more American supply comes online
I saw this tweet[1] the day after.
I go every week and saw shelves were full, but bought a years supply for our cars just in case...
https://x.com/GeorgeRoush/status/2054364409812918502
I remember some panic and thinking I’ll just hope for the best.
With modern synthetics and my driving patterns, that is 1 jug for one of my cars, and 2 jugs for the other.
Maybe now wouldn’t be the worst time. It isn’t a lot of space wasted if I didn’t need it.
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...
> There is a legal floor of ~250M, after which it is reserved for government national defense.
There is no "government national defense floor". As far as I can tell, this originates from someone misreading the SPR drawdown laws and then a bunch of people parroting it. The ~250M "floor" (really 252.4M) only applies for SPR drawdowns that aren't required by a severe energy supply interruption or to meet US obligations under the international energy program. Deciding what qualifies as a "severe energy supply interruption" is left up to the president. Essentially there's nothing stopping the president from emptying the reserve entirely. See sections d and h here: https://uscode.house.gov/view.xhtml?req=(title%3A42+section%...
Trump will 100% ignore the defense reserve. Congress won't stop him either.
Expect many “court finds that Trump …” headlines with zero consequence.
> Trump will 100% ignore the defense reserve.
I'd love to see someone try to refute this as the obvious outcome given every decision Trump has made, especially in his second term where he has far less sane babysitters around him.
This is the "If we stop testing right now, we’d have very few cases, if any" guy.
This is the guy calling for steep rate cuts in the midst of a serious inflation problem.
This is the guy that sabotages solar and wind power, intent on keeping us on oil and "clean coal" (lmao).
He's 80 years old and a malignant narcissist, he doesn't give a single fuck what happens to anyone after he's dead (and he knows that'll be pretty soon) as long as he gets what he thinks he wants today.
> Congress won't stop him either.
Also something that proves out daily.
It’s doubly bad now China is back buying oil.
Not at volume yet. How quickly they return and what volumes will determine how fast oil prices go up.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49368661
(oil futures market participant)
Not having to deal with oil changes is one of the many benefits of driving an EV
Is there really nothing that has oil in it that at some point needs changing?
The oil that lubricates the combustion chambers and pistons gets burnt and filled with nasty combustion goop. An impressive amount of cleverness goes to minimizing this, but the oil that sees the combustion chambers still goes bad at many times the rate of any other lubricant.
Even on an ICE vehicle, you have transmission oil and differential oil and lubricants in your air conditioning compressor and brake hydraulics and grease smeared on CV joints and door mechanisms and pretty much everything else that moves. But you still talk about "changing THE oil" and mean the oil-that-sees-combustion specifically (along with, typically, the filter that fights the constant battle of getting the worst combustion products out of it). I personally think that makes it fair to say "EVs don't require oil changes" because even though they don't magically eliminate the other lubrication systems or the need to maintain them, they do eliminate the one that is so much more obnoxious than the rest that we commonly called it "THE oil change" before this was ever a debate.
There is oil for the gearbox, but there's no scheduled maintenance for it at all, and in practice, people regularly get hundreds of thousands of miles without ever needing to think about it.
It does, plenty of things inside the EV require all kinds of oils, just the maintenance cycle isn't gallons and gallons every x months. You are looking at years.
I got service centers trying to rotate my tires every 3k miles because "ev". The oil change as well, oh you need to change oil every 5k because... because why?
By "plenty of things" you mean one thing with a 10yr service interval?
plenty of things inside the EV require all kinds of oils
I can come up with one. What's your list?
They do have some gearbox oil that is usually considered to last a lifetime but some sources advise changing it every 100k miles or so. This is analogous to transmission fluid in an ICEV.
The seal between the piston and the cylinder isn't perfect, so when the engine runs combustion products will mix with the oil, making the oil eventually unusable. That's why ICE engines meed oil changes so often.
Nope. I've had a Model 3 since 2018 and besides swapping out tires and window washer fluid, no maintenance.
There was suggested battery fluid maintenance when I first got the car every 3 years or so, but they removed that recommendation.
It's one of the reasons I just can't go back to a regular gas car.
Surely at some point, but it hasn’t yet happened in my short 3 years owning one
The biggest one that needs changing would be the differential.
There is not. Just brake and washer fluid and coolant.
Correct. ~140k miles on my 2018 Model S, tires, wipers and wiper fluid, and one battery pack heater replaced (deprecated, no longer used in newer builds) are all that have been done. Motors are lubricated at manufacture and sealed for life.
https://ev-lectron.com/blogs/blog/tesla-electric-vehicle-pow...
Same here. Got a 2017 Model S. Only wiper fluid and tires and had to change out break disks in the front but besides that, nothing.
I’m still on the original brakes and rotors luckily but will likely need to replace them soon from corrosion and warping versus consumption. Which is very cool imho.
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.
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.
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?
Ram Shortage, SSD shortage, CPU shortage, GPU shortage, diesel shortage, now motor oil shortage.......
Are we going to have shortage of everything now ......
If you check what is globally going on then yes, it looks like we are heading that direction.
I realize the shortages you enumerated have different reasons , but a highly respectable French engineer, Jean-Marc Jancovici , has been repeating for years that we are heading into an inevitable age of "degrowth".
It is not an "if". It is now inevitable.
He is very pro alternative sources of energy but he clearly explains nothing can replace petroleum right now. Petroleum is used to build everything. Gas for your car. Your clothes. Plastic bags. Our beloved computers. Everything uses petroleum one way or another.
We are doomed.
I’m just happy I’m too old to go through all the bad times that are coming.
Dont forget beef
Well, we already had the toilet paper shortage last time around, but round #2 of this administration just keeps on giving.
And the promise is that we will have a shortage of shortages!
What kind of vehicle takes 10 quarts of oil for a single oil change?
Most often diesel engines (I used to be an auto mechanic). Even passenger car diesels can take 10+ quarts. Gas engines typically take less oil but big engines can still take 5-7+.
I remember using a large Jerry can of oil to top off a MATV. Google says 19-28 quart capacity- oof!
That's 11.3L for the civilised audience.
For reference, my 3.6L 6-cyl boxer needs about 6.5L according to my service notes.
My 3 cylinder 1.0 litre Citroen takes exactly half that. Interesting.
But that's an inline engine, right? I think a model based on engine layout, displacement/cylinder, and cylinder count might be quite good at predicting the necessary oil (and will tell you when your car uses a bit too much compared to everyone else).
Patriots love their big trucks. More oil = owning the lib vegans.
Lots of people haul things. The US is huge compared to what most people expect. Big trucks can be a necessity depending on what you do for a living/your way of life.
The vast majority of pickups are not actually used for workmen like purposes.
In fact, as carmakers have started pivoting more towards selling them to affluent suburban households, the usable cargo volume has decreased over time despite increasing size.
Things can be hauled just fine in an estate, saloon, or even a hatchback. European camper vans are regularly hauled by tiny Golfs or Polos with barely a litre of engine displacement and a hundred kilowatts of power.
Americans just buy much bigger vehicles than necessary.
>Big trucks can be a necessity depending on what you do for a living/your way of life.
You might have missed this part. My round bales are 1000kg, and the field gets wet. How do I move the goats? How do I pull someone out of that ditch where the sign says 15mph but every winter they slide through my fence?
Right, but seeing trucks obviously not set up for towing or hauling is becoming more common nowadays. With the level of luxury trims available on some trucks now, it's obvious that they aren't a necessity anymore.
This is on top of trucks prioritizing 4 door models and taking bites out of the truck bed
Same trend here in NZ. People buying utes/trucks just because they want, not because they need. They're not as big as the American F150s etc, more a Toyota Hilux or Ford Ranger.
And they're often driven by reckless road ragers, often modified with uncertified suspension, bush lights turned on at night blinding oncoming traffic, and wheels extending past the fender flares. These vehicles are often financed to the hilt, so spending money on certifying the modifications is out of the picture, so a lot of these are not legal to drive on the roads.
What do you think is the % of people having F150 that really do need F150?
What % of people who have wealth really need that wealth?
That may be true. However it does not explain how many people have big trucks that are never used as trucks
they want big vehicles to carry their big ego
Lots of people haul things everywhere. Driving a truck as your main vehicle because you haul something twice a month is ridiculously wasteful, of money foremost.
I have a small trailer, rent a bigger one or van when needed.
The 3L diesel in my car takes about 8qt per change. The 5.9L diesel in my truck takes 12qt.
Cessnas.
Older Porsche 911s take about 11 quarts.
most of V8 engines need 10+ quarts
Diesel trucks. My Ram 1500 with the 5.7 Hemi takes 7 qt. The 5.9 Cummins in my Ram 2500 takes 12 qts.
Most v8s.
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" ???????
Welcome To Costco, I Love You
Went by classic car show today. Beautiful stuff.
Most of the rear view mirrors were a mirror, a shaft, and a hinge.
Replaced mine last year in a 2014 X3 for $1800.
Why didn't you go with the shaft and hinge?