Mastodawn

Volker Stolz 5h ago

https://www.france24.com/en/france-confirms-oil-crisis-says-30-40-gulf-energy-infrastructure-destroyed

France's Finance Minister Roland Lescure revealed on Wednesday that between 30 and 40 per cent of Gulf refining capacity has been damaged or destroyed by Iran's retaliatory strikes, leaving a shortage of 11 million barrels a day on global oil markets. Lescure warned it could take up to three years to restore damaged facilities, and several months to restart those that were urgently shut down.

Business - France confirms oil crisis, says 30-40 percent of Gulf energy infrastructure destroyed

France's Finance Minister Roland Lescure revealed on Wednesday that between 30 and 40 per cent of Gulf refining capacity has been damaged or destroyed by Iran's retaliatory strikes, leaving a shortage of 11 million barrels a day on global oil markets. Lescure warned it could take up to three years to restore damaged facilities, and several months to restart those that were urgently shut down.

FRANCE 24

Alan Langford 🇨🇦🧤🧊摏 5h ago

@cstross The US DoD had a guy who warned them this would happen, but as it turns out his grandmother voted Democrat once in '59, so they fired him.

Curioso 🍉 🇺🇦 (jgg)5h ago

The good thing about it is since Trump banned new offshore wind farms and paid compensations to the companies who were building them, now we have more options to create more renewable power plants.

Let's take advantage of it as fast as we can.

More integration about energy (power grids, gas, oil...) in Europe is another must; there a lot of buzz about it in Brussels nowadays.

Of Bookish Things 17m ago

@jgg @alan @cstross

$35B in EV and clean energy projects move to Europe, 38000 Jobs LOST to USA

* "There will be so much whining, you'll be tired of the whining! Please, Mr. President, make it stop."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q2yGHTbS9so

US Companies ABANDON America - $35B Moves to Europe, 38000 Jobs LOST to USA

YouTube

WellsiteGeo 4h ago

@alan @cstross
It's a lie.
They shot him.
He had seen the Epstein files.

@cstross So the fertilizer supply is messed up for this year and next and maybe the year after, which means food availability (not price; availability) seems likely to get iffy.

The Gulf States do not experience domestic food surplus; their ability to feed the workforce that maintains those refineries comes into question. (Their willingness to feed the workforce of a shut down refinery is another thing.)

This starts to look like it could be a question of recovering the community of practice.

WellsiteGeo 4h ago

@graydon @cstross
They'll repatriate the workforce to Pakistan (Bangladesh) 70% or India 30% if they're not ticketed for repair/ reconstruction tasks.
It's the Gulf. That is what you do.

@WellsiteGeo @cstross I would expect, yes.

Be more interesting if the repatriate the ship crews, who are collectively starting to run out of food, fresh water, etc. because they're stuck.

WellsiteGeo 3h ago

@graydon @cstross
They'd have a *lot* of problems "cold stacking" ships. Installing double-point anchorages alone would take months. * If * they (Qatar esp) have sea space.
Without crew, you have no generators, no riding lights, no option for avoidance in event of another ship losing power under way (see recent Humberside crash+fatality).
Airlines don't remove crew when they stack aircraft. Shiplines also don't remove crew when they stack ships.
Not going to happen this year.

Medea Vanamonde 🏳️‍⚧️3h ago

@graydon @cstross

Springtime for Putin
And Iran
Winter for Iraq and Kuwait

BashStKid 5h ago

@cstross I know nothing, but I am a bit sceptical. Gulf states will exaggerate damage for several reasons:
- to play dead and avoid Iran targeting them again
- to claim force majeure on existing fixed price sales and sell instead at higher prices
- bit of insurance fraud
- jockeying for position with the few limited vendors who will be asked to do all the repairs for everyone.

@BashStKid @cstross The French have independent satellite recon and a substantial intelligence apparatus; their Finance Minister doesn't have to rely on what the Gulf States are saying. For Gulf State press releases you might have a point, but this is a minister of state doing something he knows will immediately make his job harder and his country worse off. I would tend to expect that his numbers are what he thinks of as the real numbers.

BashStKid 4h ago

@graydon @cstross Those are very fair points.

In particular, I wonder how much the Gulf countries have inadvertently all chosen the same local engineering firms for their plant and instrumentation, and now they’re all stuffed because they have nothing in the warehouse.

@BashStKid @cstross Maintenance planning and rebuilding planning are going to be different; maintenance goes through x amount of long-lead-time-spec pipe per year, while rebuilding would require a few thousand x and oh dear, the one place on earth that makes that stuff is booked for the next five years.

So the warehouse is not so much empty as meta-empty; no one expected to rebuild any of those facilities and the productive capacity to produce the materials hasn't been allocated.

@BashStKid @cstross I would also expect none of the Gulf States care right now; it's not over, and rebuilding before things are definitively over won't do anything to improve matters.

In the meantime, they need to import food, spares, and necessities of life and were accustomed to do that by sea. A prolonged closure of navigation amounts to a regional siege.

Medea Vanamonde 🏳️‍⚧️4h ago

Spring time
For Putin
And The Russian Federation
Winter
For Germany
And France

WellsiteGeo 4h ago

@cstross
Having seen "crash shutdown" of oil processing plants ... yeah, that damages plant. Even in plant *designed* for that (e.g. oil rigs), re-start can take days.
The rocket force of dumping the flammable inventory through the flare stack can damage pipe itself, before the heat re-anneals the steel.

@cstross US will.pay everyone reparations for Epstein war right?. Oh wait, when in their 250yr existence, have they been ever held up responsible for genocide & terrorism domestically or around the world.

@cstross If they're not careful, the oil-baron sponsored nazi rulers are going to push businesses towards finally actually using renewables.

And it's unlikely they'd spend to convert back if they actually made the conversion...

I don't know if all this could truly lead to that, but darn would it ever be funny if it did...

Nicole Parsons 2h ago

France had ample opportunity to ramp up its supply of wind & solar, but the fossil fuel industry funded the Yellow Vests & thwarted the switch to renewable energy.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-02-12/france-slightly-pares-solar-and-wind-plans-on-weak-power-demand

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-12-09/french-grid-operator-sees-power-surplus-lasting-several-years

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-09-18/french-wind-power-backlash-seen-pushing-capacity-growth-to-20-year-low

https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/france-trims-wind-solar-targets-by-up-20-new-energy-law-2026-02-12/

Every nation who tires of having its food supply, industry, and economy held hostage by the oil industry needs to switch away from fossil fuel.

Autonomy. Agency. Sovereignty.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/ng-interactive/2026/mar/19/us-iran-war-cost

1/

Nicole Parsons 2h ago

2/

It all becomes possible when you stop giving away the wealth of your nation to oil oligarchs and petrostate despots.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/jul/21/revealed-oil-sectors-staggering-profits-last-50-years

https://www.euronews.com/2025/02/04/fossil-fuel-subsidies-g7-nations-ignore-targets-and-increase-taxpayer-funding-to-record-le

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fossil_fuel_subsidies

Revealed: oil sector’s ‘staggering’ $3bn-a-day profits for last 50 years

Vast sums provide power to ‘buy every politician’ and delay action on climate crisis, says expert

The Guardian

Fazal Majid 1h ago

@cstross Lescure is a very smart guy, and I’m not just saying that because he was an upperclassman 2 years before me at my Alma mater 😃