I know a lot of members on here know what they are talking about and aren't alarmist. Should I be rushing out to hoard gasoline and buy motor oil by the end of the week. Hoarding gasoline is highly dangerous, it degrades quickly even with stabilizers.
It is an expensive undertaking to go out to buyand store gas and oil. Also, our emergency heat is only a 9 day 24/7gas fireplace and two small kerosene heaters and the weather is calling for a good chance of the worst winter in history. I would need to stock pile more kerosene. I would need to go out and buy a wood stove and wood to cook/heat the house and the cost of installation. I need to get wall insulation to reinforce the basement to make a smaller warmer area to live in until the power comes back on and keep the pipes from freezing. I have food and water for maybe a few weeks but if there is a gas shortage then I need to be gathering more food and water. This could get quite costly and my space is limited for storage.
My question is what is your, and the member's of Defcon Warning System forum, probability a crisis is coming before Spring 2027?
First, I try not to sound alarmist, but I also tend to prep for worst-case scenario. Personally, I've been stockpiling anywhere between 25 and 100 gallons of gasoline for many years, depending on the crisis situation. I do this for natural disasters as well as geopolitics. Currently, I have around 80 gallons. Yes, the initial stockpile is expensive, but this is fuel I am going to use in lawn mowers and other equipment around the house anyway, so I simply rotate it as I use it, roughly 10 - 15 gallons at a time. As an experiment, I once used stabilized fuel stored for 18 months and there were no problems. Also, I store 0-ethanol gasoline, which significantly improves shelf life..
Back in May when I first posted the intel on oil shortages being predicted by September, we stockpiled enough motor oil and filters that we have four oil changes for our vehicles, roughly a year's worth. Since our recent purchase of an EV, that supply will now probably last 18 months. I did this before prices doubled and rationing was implemented, and again, this is something I can use outside of a crisis as well, so no money really wasted. Since we needed a new vehicle anyway, the impending oil crisis was part of our decision to purchase an EV, which will largely be unaffected by fuel prices and shortages. We didn't say to ourselves, "Oh, shit, we're going to run out of oil!" and immediately go out and buy an EV. We said, "We have to buy a new vehicle, and these are our options," two of which were standard ICE vehicles.
By the way, it was actually my wife's idea to add an EV to the list of options because of a potential oil crisis. My wife is my rational partner, and if we both agree that a crisis needs to be taken seriously, that is a good indication that it's not just me being paranoid. She reads the same intel I do.
I do not have anything that requires kerosene, so I cannot speak for how an oil crisis would impact you there. You're going to have to do some research. On my end I have been using my company's AI (Opus 5) to pull news reports from reliable sources and provide me with odds of a major oil/energy crisis occurring, using the 1979 energy crisis as a benchmark. Last week it placed the odds of such a crisis materializing before the end of the year at 8%. After the shutdown of the Saudi pipeline and the Houthis takeover of Mocha and Mayun, those odds almost doubled to 15%. 30%-35% after the new year. And 35% - 40% of a severe crisis not quite on par with 1979 but still resulting in record fuel prices, rationing in certain areas (but not nationally), and a probable recession.
We're starting to reach numbers that while not necessarily panic-inducing, are still concerning. Things my AI is watching for (quoted):
- Pipeline still down past roughly October 10. That's the single cleanest indicator, and it's publicly observable.
- Houthi targeting expanding past Saudi-flagged vessels. That converts a blockade into a closure.
- US distillate stocks breaking below ~90 million barrels in the October EIA weeklies with heating season starting. This is the one that hits your clients, and it's where the physical shortage would actually show up first — Northeast heating oil bidding against trucking for the same barrels, PADD 1 before anywhere else.
If all three of these occur, the revised estimate is 35% before the end of the year and nearing the 50/50 line for 2027. Keep in mind, the odds of a serious oil crisis occurring without reaching my 1979 benchmark are even higher. Of course, he has qualified these numbers as "structured guesses" based on publicly available OSINT. One other thing, there are already concerns here locally about farmers not being able to afford diesel for this year's harvest, bringing into the mix the potential for food shortages and price increases.
Ultimately, the purpose of this site is to share information and opinions so people can decide for themselves what they should do. I don't see this crisis easing anytime soon. Therefore, I am taking steps I think are prudent to take in case the worst happens, and if the worst doesn't happen, I'm not really out any money because everything I'm spending money on I can still use at any time. Your situation and analysis of the situation might be extremely different, in which case, use this information as you see fit.
theworlddata.com
Oil in U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve falls below 300 million barrels, lowest since 1983
www.cnbc.com
There is so much to do and buy it is overwhelming. I will start with the easiest (since I'm ill) and do one thing at a time. Now that snowblower I was wanting to buy this year may have to be put on hold but there may be no gas or electiricty for it anyway.
