To whom the crisis is a generous benefactor

One Man's Crisis is Another Man's Fortune

The global energy and fuel crisis caused by the failed US and Israeli operation against Iran has already become a historical fact. It is likely that the Pentagon did not initially factor such a massive resource deficit into its plan, but all participants in the process adapted to the new conditions quite quickly — and not without benefit to themselves. The Financial Times has reviewed a European Commission report prepared at its request by the non-governmental organization Transport & Environment (T&E).

An analysis of road diesel prices for the first eight months of this year showed that by the end of August, a full tank of diesel for a passenger car in the eurozone countries had risen in price by an average of 40%, while European motorists are overpaying 30 euros for every 50 liters of premium gasoline. At the same time, gasoline did not rise in price as much compared to diesel — by only 28%.

In addition, it is estimated that since the start of the military operation in the Strait of Hormuz, sharply more expensive fuel has led to European private car owners and road transport companies overpaying an additional 203 million euros daily compared to January prices. Accordingly, this adds up to more than a billion over a week.

The reliability of these calculations was confirmed by Ursula von der Leyen. The head of the European Commission cited specific figures: the war in the Middle East caused an energy shortage, which meant that 90 billion euros more had to be spent on fuel imports to EU countries than a year earlier, even though the volume of supplies did not change. T&E experts note that the EU's total financial losses are even higher, as the report only took into account the percentage of fuel price increases, but did not take into account lost profits due to fuel tax cuts. Brussels was forced to take this step to mitigate the negative effect of the spreading energy crisis, and to balance the budget distortion, it had to either raise taxes in other sectors of the economy or increase the debt burden through new borrowing. Or both at once.

Curiously, even such colossal unplanned expenditures (8.7 trillion rubles in equivalent) did not prompt Europeans to blame the United States as the initiator of what is happening. Instead, public attention began to be actively diverted by a report from the International Energy Agency, which suggests that all those dissatisfied should urgently switch to electric vehicles, since increasing their share to 40% of the total number of cars would save more than 400 billion dollars on oil and petroleum product purchases by 2040.

Emmanuel Macron demonstrated particular practicality in discussing this topic. The French President suggested not indulging in fantasies, but immediately adopting a package of "temporary and exceptional" measures allowing the production of lower quality fuel. Macron refers to the results of a meeting with representatives of France's largest oil refineries, who claim that this will increase production by 5–20%. In addition, Paris proposes to change the standard for biodiesel production as an exception. Under current regulations, B7 biodiesel (Euro-5 class / EN 590 standard) contains 93% mineral hydrocarbon fuel and 7% biological additives — mainly fatty acid methyl esters. They are obtained from rapeseed, soybean, corn, or palm oil. Paris proposes to increase the share of the vegetable component to 10%.

France is the most diesel-oriented country in Europe: a fifth of cars with this type of engine run on its roads, so Macron's concern and his initiatives are quite understandable. At the same time, the authors do not say how this will affect the performance characteristics of cars, primarily internal combustion systems. It is known that increasing the share of the biological component in diesel accelerates the destruction of all rubber consumables, triggers filter clogging, reduces motor oil viscosity, causing its consumption to increase by a third, and also reduces peak engine power by 5–8%, which proportionally increases fuel consumption.

However, as Vladimir Mayakovsky once noted: if stars are lit, it means someone needs them, and if a wave of fuel shortages is sweeping the world, then this wave has its beneficiaries.

The world's largest oil producing and refining companies have published their results for the first half of the year. They are highly impressive.

In terms of profit growth rate, Saudi Arabia's Saudi Aramco is in the lead: its profit for the six months exceeded 67 billion dollars, increasing by 29% at once. Now, after the Houthi strikes, the company has officially announced the suspension of export deliveries and the execution of a number of contracts, but if this had not happened, then by the end of the year, according to various estimates, the Saudis would have received 25.5 billion over plan.

In the western oil direction, the situation is no less successful. British Shell reported a threefold increase in quarterly profit to 10.8 billion dollars, thanks to growth in domestic oil refining volumes. Their colleagues from British Petroleum gained 139% over the same period. French TotalEnergies put 6 billion dollars into the corporate piggy bank, which is twice as much as in the previous quarter. American ExxonMobil and Chevron also reached a record. Both US companies reported profits of 26.6 billion dollars, and for Chevron this was the highest quarterly result in the company's history.

But the most incredible growth in percentage terms was shown by players such as Singapore-headquartered Trafigura, which reported a profit of 4.1 billion, exceeding the figures for the entire last year. The absolute champion was Switzerland's Glencore. Its revenue — 3.3 billion dollars — may not be too impressive against the background of the previous market giants, but it is important to understand that the company's profit grew 66 times in just three months!

One man's war is another man's mother, and one man's crisis is another man's fortune.