American consumers could see their heating bills rise this winter if the season turns out to be especially cold, Reuters reported Tuesday.
Distillate inventories, which include heating oil, were about 15% below the five-year average as of late August, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. A chilly winter could drive heating bills up for Americans this winter, especially as higher demand from European countries and OPEC+ production cuts take hold in international markets, Reuters reported.
“We are living barrel to barrel and there is just no room for errors in the system,” Phil Flynn, analyst for the Price Futures Group, said, according to Reuters. “If we get a cold winter, there are going to be significant price shocks.”
American refiners have not built up large inventories of the distillate-rich varieties of oil in advance of the seasonal demand increase, driven by Americans looking to stay warm in their homes, according to Reuters. A central factor in this development is the lack of abundant supply of medium and heavy- grade crude oil that tend to be distillate-rich.
Meanwhile, OPEC+ has cut its production, and the U.S. has exported much of its excess supply to European allies as they grapple with the fallout from sanctioning Russia after it invaded Ukraine in February 2022, according to Reuters.
Indicating the market’s sensitivity, U.S. diesel futures temporarily spiked to a seven-month high on Aug. 25 following a fire at Marathon Petroleum’s 596,000 barrel per day (bpd) refining facility in Garyville, Louisiana, the third largest of its kind in the country, according to Reuters. Several large refining facilities are also scheduled to go offline temporarily for maintenance throughout the fall, which could remove 2 million bpd form the country’s 18.1 million bpd overall output, Robert Yawger, an analyst for Mizuho, told Reuters.
The White House did not respond immediately to a request for comment.
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Independent Journalism Is Dying
Ever since President Trump’s miraculous victory, we’ve heard an incessant drumbeat about how legacy media is dying. This is true. The people have awakened to the reality that they’re being lied to by the self-proclaimed “Arbiters of Truth” for the sake of political expediency, corporate self-protection, and globalist ambitions.
But even as independent journalism rises to fill the void left by legacy media, there is still a huge challenge. Those at the top of independent media like Joe Rogan, Dan Bongino, and Tucker Carlson are thriving and rightly so. They have earned their audience and the financial rewards that come from it. They’ve taken risks and worked hard to get to where they are.
For “the rest of us,” legacy media and their proxies are making it exceptionally difficult to survive, let alone thrive. They still have a stranglehold over the “fact checkers” who have a dramatic impact on readership and viewership. YouTube, Facebook, and Google still stifle us. The freer speech platforms like Rumble and 𝕏 can only reward so many of their popular content creators. For independent journalists on the outside looking in, our only recourse is to rely on affiliates and sponsors.
But even as it seems nearly impossible to make a living, there are blessings that should not be disregarded. By highlighting strong sponsors who share our America First worldview, we have been able to make lifelong connections and even a bit of revenue to help us along. This is why we enjoy symbiotic relationships with companies like MyPillow, Jase Medical, and Promised Grounds. We help them with our recommendations and they reward us with money when our audience buys from them.
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Even our faith-driven precious metals sponsor helps us tremendously while also helping Americans protect their life’s savings. We are blessed to work with them.
Independent media is the future. In many ways, that future is already here. While the phrase, “the more the merrier,” does not apply to this business because there are still some bad actors in the independent media field, there are many great ones that do not get nearly enough attention. We hope to change that one content creator at a time.
Thank you and God Bless,
JD Rucker
