Is Joe Biden to Blame for the Diesel Shortage?

After the Energy Information Administration (EIA) reported that as of October 14, the U.S. had only 25.4 days left of distillate supplies—mainly diesel, jet fuel and heating oil—last week, fears over the U.S. running out of diesel have been growing across the country.

Republican lawmakers on social media, including Colorado Representative Lauren Boebert and Arkansas Senator Tom Cotton, have been blaming the low inventories of diesel on President Joe Biden. But is the current supply crunch the Biden administration's fault?

Patrick De Haan, GasBuddy's head of petroleum analysis, told Newsweek blame for the current low inventories cannot be put on Biden's policies and decisions.

"Biden is not to blame—this is due to lack of refining capacity, which has fallen 1 million barrels a day, primarily due to COVID-19 in 2020 curbing demand," De Haan said.

"Hurricane Ida badly damaged a refinery in 2021, and an explosion took out the Philadelphia Energy Solutions refinery in Pennsylvania in 2019. This is simply not enough refining capacity exacerbated by Russia's war on Ukraine and countries looking for supply elsewhere that isn't Russian."

Since the pandemic, at least nine oil refineries across the U.S. have shut down or cut their production, as reported by Reuters.

These are:

• Hollyfrontier in Cheyenne, Wyoming (shut down in June 2020 under former President Donald Trump)
• Calcasieu Refining in Lake Charles, Louisiana (closed in early August 2020 under Trump)
• Phillips 66 Rodeo in California (to be turned into a renewable fuels plant in early 2024)
• Marathon's two refineries in New Mexico: Martinez California and Gallup (to be converted to produce renewable diesel in 2023)
• Shell Convent in St. James, Louisiana (closure announced in November 2020)
• Limetree Bay in St. Croix, United States Virgin Islands (sold to a Jamaican oil storage facility in December 2021)
• Phillips 66 Alliance in Belle Chasse, Louisiana (closure announced in November 2021)
• Lyondellbasell Houston, Texas (expected to close by end of 2023)

There are other factors, besides the decreased production capacity of U.S. refineries over the past couple of years that are contributing to the current diesel supply crunch.

One reason is that many refineries have just come out of seasonal maintenance, something that is normally done in spring and fall, when there is generally less demand for diesel.

Another reason is that demand normally spikes this time of the year, as farmers are planting their crops in the fall and households start to want to turn the heat on in their homes as temperatures outside drop.

"Diesel can be very seasonal. It's become a bigger concern now because we are heading into the colder months," Denton Cinquegrana, chief oil analyst at Oil Price Information Service (OPIS), previously told Newsweek.

"East Coast inventories stand at about 24 million barrels, and that is more than 20 million barrels below what is normal for this time of year. Other regions (except the West Coast, that sees a small surplus to the five-year average) also see deficits to the seasonal norm, but they are much more manageable.

"For example, the Midwest is about 4 million barrels below normal, but also this is the time of year diesel supplies bottom out in that region with harvest demand."

A fourth reason has to do with the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which has triggered an energy crisis in Europe and a global spike in energy prices across the world.

Before the war in Ukraine, the U.S. was importing nearly 700,000 barrels per day of petroleum and petroleum products from Russia. But since the beginning of the invasion, the Biden administration has banned all imports from Moscow.

"Almost every oil market this year has had some sort of dislocation or they've had to make an adjustment to the fact that we don't have the Russian oil that we had counted on. And we have a very, very aggressive OPEC + cartel. But I think we're going to make the adjustment," Tom Kloza, dean of U.S. oil analysts at OPIS, told Newsweek.

Though U.S. refineries are adjusting to the changes in the market this year, they are still struggling to fill the hole in supplies left by the lack of Russian imports.

All these factors combined have contributed to skyrocketing diesel prices this year, with the record-high average price of $5.703 a gallon in June. Even though prices have dropped some since then, they have only gone down by 8 percent—and now prices are expected to surge during the winter.

A White House official told Fox Business that the Biden administration is keeping a close eye on diesel inventory levels and that it is working with U.S. energy firms to replenish reserves.

The Biden administration is also looking into expanding a little-used emergency fuel reserve in New England, in an attempt to reduce home heating prices this winter.

In the meantime, at least two ships carrying some one million barrels of diesel and jet fuel have been diverted from their original destinations in Europe to the U.S., from where they'll be sent to the East Coast, where diesel supply deficits are concentrated.