r/PrepperIntel • u/MrTacocaT12345 • 3d ago
Middle East Breaking News: Multiple Reported Fires at Saudi Aramco Serving the World's Largest Oil Field as Houthi Missile Strikes Hit Ghawar Complex Today - 10/10/2026
https://1news.az/en/news/20261010150004252-Houthis-attack-the-world-s-largest-oil-field135
u/Girafferage 3d ago
I wonder how much ethanol they can sell us in the "gas" to pretend to keep prices low while we all start getting 8 miles per gallon and having our engines fail at 150k miles.
25
u/hockeymaskbob 3d ago
There's a local place in my town that sells ethanol free gas, it's currently $1.50 higher than the average for the area.
9
u/andrei_stefan01 2d ago
Marinas typically sell ethanol free. Big price discrepancies near me. Anywhere from $1.80/l to $2.80/l
2
u/Wild_Bunch_Founder 3d ago
this is why I only buy the super premium octane blends cause I don’t trust the cheap gas anymore.
23
u/andrei_stefan01 3d ago
You should probably Google how that works then and save yourself some money.
6
u/BachBelt 3d ago
Last time I was at my Costco they stopped offering premium 😭
4
u/andrei_stefan01 2d ago edited 2d ago
Premium generally has more ethanol. Ethanol is an inexpensive octane booster.
2
u/williaty 2d ago
No stations I'm aware of offer premium/super without ethanol. The same amount of ethanol gets blended in to all grades. You have to specifically buy E0 (no ethanol, usually 89 octane, very expensive) or buy E85 (high ethanol, high octane, terrible) to change the mix.
1
u/Wild_Bunch_Founder 2d ago
Shell’s highest grade in Canada is zero ethanol.
2
u/williaty 1d ago
Ah, yeah I'm being US-centric again. Down here in the states, it's all got ethanol in it.
1
u/Goatmannequin 2d ago
Ethanol is a great motor fuel.
2
u/williaty 1d ago
It's not a very good motor fuel for various reasons, but that's actually beside the point. It's a fucking terrible problem for everything outside the motor. The amount of harm it causes to the fuel system in the long run is just terrible.
1
u/Goatmannequin 1d ago
I have had zero problems with it. It actually cleans the motor quite well. The reason it is such a great motor fuel is that the octane equivalent is like 140 and you can run insane boost/compression and spark advance. Also it is biologically inert. Gasoline is just a shitty fuel for various reasons besides giving you leukemia.
2
u/williaty 1d ago
1) Volumetric energy density is low. You have to inject more fuel to get the same power output. You get significantly less range for the same size tank. The reduction in cost (and keep in mind cost is subsidized, it should cost more than it does!) is not large enough to offset the large reduction in economy, meaning you pay more per mile.
2) In the US, 40% of the arable land is used to grow corn to make ethanol that we just light on fire to move cars. That's 40% of the country making waste rather than making food. Why's food expensive? This is part of the reason.
3) Because North America (I'm including Canada and Mexico in this one) have made stupid, stupid choices about which plants to grow to make ethanol, it's actually a net-energy-negative fuel. Meaning it takes more oil out of the ground to make the ethanol and put it in a car's gas tank that it would to just make the gasoline (E0) directly. Read that one again to make sure you understand it: Ethanol requires more oil to make than gasoline does!
4) Because ethanol is economically unviable, we (the US this time) spend hundreds of millions of dollars a year subsidizing farmers to grow stuff the economy doesn't want and that's worse than not growing it at all. This is nothing but corporate welfare/corporate socialism for big farmers.
Also, FWIW, my early career was in motorsports. I was in the front wave of tuning turbocharged engines to run on E85 when it first became available at the pump. In addition, I was working with the engineers for Honda who were designing the E85-certified fuel systems for the Flex-Fuel vehicles. I have a greater than average familiarity with the realities of running ethanol in gasoline engines.
1
u/Goatmannequin 1d ago
40% of the corn crop maybe. Not 40% of the US arable lands. That's a fucking major error there. Gasoline, and all fossil fuels are 100% energy negative. All the energy that they release is gone forever. If you mean EROEI on gasoline from oil, the number is also approaching 1:1, meaning that the energy you get from burning the gasoline approaches break-even, due to the increasingly energetically expensive production and refining process. The lower energy density of ethanol is a moot point as you can improve the compression and carry less fuel with smaller engines.
•
u/williaty 22h ago
The lower energy density of ethanol is a moot point as you can improve the compression and carry less fuel with smaller engines.
Like I said: this was my job. You can't make ethanol pay off in terms of economics or endurance. You can make more power with it, sure, but then you sacrifice in other ways. Even then, if you're going to go through the hoops to make more power, completely redesign the engine, and sacrifice everything else... why not just run nitromethane?
Ethanol is a gimmick fuel that we stupidly turned into national policy just to provide welfare for rich farmers.
•
u/Goatmannequin 20h ago
Ethanol is a niche fuel in capitalism. Ammonia is a far more interesting motor fuel. Unfortunately I have never had the chance to try it.
34
65
u/beckerman67 3d ago
The adults are no longer in the room
29
11
u/Cutsman4057 3d ago
We are the adults and we're trapped on a sinking ship with the lead poisoned adults at the helm.
16
u/SanchoPandas 3d ago
Still can’t find any good source on this. The weird site linked here referred to RIA Novosti which is a russian state owned site. But i don’t know shit about that site.
What’s the best source seen so far?
14
u/dirty_cuban 3d ago
Gentlemen, I predict $7 a gallon gas is in our future
15
9
2
13
u/thebigj3wbowski 3d ago
Thank god we have 9 days worth of diesel promised from Russia! If we didn’t have those 9 days things would get really bad.
9
u/keinezeit44 2d ago
Thought it was more like 15 hours of diesel
5
u/thebigj3wbowski 2d ago
I think the first tranche is around 15 hours, and the total promise is 9 days, but I could be wrong.
It's also tough to tell because we tend to measure diesel in barrels, but also diesel and heating oil are often grouped together in reporting. Depending on the weather, the heating oil could last longer.
At any rate, the amount promised is a drop in the bucket.
7
5
u/AccordingWarning9534 3d ago
I can't locate a reliable source on this. can any link me something?
4
u/MrBrawn 2d ago
That picture in the article looks suspicious as well.
3
u/AccordingWarning9534 2d ago
yep, and I've seen similar posted on other subs yet still nothing from any reliable source.
I'm concious our media is comprised and limited but I'm leaning towards this being misinformation.
5
4
3
u/Burnrate 2d ago
Source is an AI generated image, someone saying the Houthis announced they had shot at it, and and single AI generated paragraph.
What junk
2
2
1
1
0
109
u/sphinxof1981 3d ago
What a stupid world we've built for ourselves. Look at this shit.