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By John Helmer, Moscow
@bears_with [2]
When President Donald Trump blames Vladimir Zelensky for the diesel crisis in the US, he is more than scapegoating the wrong man. He is revealing he has no October Surprise – no peace deal for the Russia-Ukraine war, no peace deal with Iran, no peace deal with Yemen – to save his majority in the US Congress on November 3.
Asked by a reporter on September 13 [3] if the Russia-Ukraine war “could end sooner”, Trump was evasive, replying: “The problem I have with Ukraine and Russia is that, you know, a lot of the diesel comes, diesel oil comes, and that’s the one where there’s a, a big up, uh, it comes from Russia. And the Russia just, uh, plants are being hit by Ukraine. And I’ve asked President Zelensky not to hit the diesel plants, refineries.”
Trump was repeating himself. The day before on September 12 [4], he had said: “Mr. Zelensky has to do one thing. Mr. Zelensky has to do one thing. Wait a minute. You want, can I talk? Mr. Zelensky has to do one thing. He has to stop knocking out diesel fuel in Russia. Let him go after targets, but not diesel fuel ’cause he’s causing a shortage of diesel fuel. This isn’t done by the Middle East, this is done by what’s happening with Russia and Ukraine. So, uh, we spoke to Mr. Zelensky about it. There are plenty of other targets. Don’t hit diesel fuel because that’s hurting, that’s hurting the world. We don’t want him to hit diesel fuel.”
Zelensky ignored him, encouraged by his US target intelligence advisers, his CIA and Pentagon liaison officers.
On September 15 [5], the Ukrainian General Staff announced they had carried out a new drone strike on the Syzran oil refinery in Samara. It was the fourth such attack this year on Syzran, a regional fuel producer owned by Rosneft.
As Russia had stopped diesel exports on July 8, and the volume of diesel produced at Syzran is small, the Ukrainian strike will have no impact on falling diesel inventories and accelerating diesel prices in the US. Nor can Trump’s public blame for Zelensky save him from the rising tide of votes against the Republican candidates, especially in Senate battleground states which are super-sensitive to the cost of diesel like Maine and Alaska.
One reason for Trump’s failure is that the world’s largest exporter of diesel is the US itself [6]. His scapegoating conceals his protection of war and price profiteering on the part of the lead US diesel refiners and exporters – Marathon, Valero, Phillips, and ExxonMobil. They have been exporting diesel abroad in preference to selling it at home because the price profit is greater. Their share prices are zooming as a result – Marathon by 128% in the year to date; Valero by 152%, Phillips by 102%, and ExxonMobil by 51%.
The second reason is that Iran by halting oil tanker shipments out of the Persian Gulf at Hormuz, and Ansar Allah by doing the same to Saudi shipments out of the Red Sea at Bab el Mandeb, have cut an even larger share of the diesel export market globally than the US share – fractionally, about one-third compared to one-seventh.
The third reason is related: as both Russia and China are withholding their diesel exports for the protection of their domestic markets, India, the second largest refiner and exporter of diesel after the US, is determined to import as much Russian and Iranian crude as it can get past the US and NATO sanctions. Even so, the principal Indian refineries are already running at well over their production capacities: they cannot produce more. The US and NATO war against Russian tankers on the high seas and the US threat of secondary sanctions against India for buying Russian oil will have to be suspended.
In this way, Trump’s wars are not winning abroad but they are defeating him at home.
The October Surprise, the term of invention in US politics for swinging undecided voters in the last weeks before November Election Day [7], remains a Trump White House hope, supported in statements from Kiev [8] and also from Moscow [9].
In the new podcast with Nima Alkhorshid [10], aired on Monday afternoon ET, we discuss why this time round, Trump’s vulnerabilities and the number of wars he is fighting make a surprise unlikely to be a rescue.
[11]Click to view or listen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j4FIK-ZC1Yk [10]
THE US DIESEL CRISIS — THE VOTERS AND THE STATES LOSE
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[17]Source: https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/energysource/the-diesel-shock-is-here-which-us-states-will-be-hit-the-hardest/ [18]
THE US DIESEL CRISIS – THE CORPORATIONS GAIN
[19]Source: https://markets.ft.com/data/equities/tearsheet/charts?s=MPC:NYQ [20]
KEY: top line=Marathon Petroleum; next=Valero energy; next=Phillips 66; bottom=ExxonMobil
TRUMP’S JOB APPROVAL AT THE POLLS
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[22]Source: https://www.realclearpolling.com/polls/approval/donald-trump/approval-rating [23]
For elaboration of our discussion of Putin’s choice for the main-thrust direction of the battlefield armies in line with the terms in negotiation of the latest US plan, read Oleg Tsarev’s essay [24] of yesterday. “In the new leak, a whole sequence is built: elections, referendum, amendment of the Constitution with the rejection of the forceful return of territories and only after that – the signing of a full-fledged peace treaty. And the new Ukrainian government should sign it. In other words, the new version specifies in detail the mechanism of implementation of the plan. There are two elements that were not at all in the November document: a referendum and a change of signatory. The referendum translates the territorial refusal from the area of political decision to the field of popular will. And the change of the signatory means that Zelensky is legally unable to complete the deal. In fact, Moscow’s long-standing requirement of legitimacy to the Ukrainian authorities was issued in the form of a specific legal procedure.”
“The new version of the plan [25], if the leaks are correct, explains in detail how the conditions should be met and legally fixed. This detailing removes ambiguity and leaves no territorial questions for later. The disputed status of the territories is the reason for the conflicts in the future. There will be no disputed territories – there will be no reason to dispute. In a new detailed plan, if it is accepted, there will be no reason for conflict because of the territories. That’s good. It remains to find the levers that will force Zelensky to accept this plan.”
PUTIN’S CHOICE – BATTLEFIELD PRIORITIES FOR THE MAIN THRUST
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