The most consequential fuel price in the country is not the one on the gas station sign. Diesel runs the tractors that plant, the combines that harvest and the trucks that carry food to the shelf, and it now costs $5.278 a gallon nationally against $3.742 a year ago [3] - a difference of about $1.53 on every gallon.
For farms, that arithmetic has already been totalled. American farmers have spent an additional $1.4 billion on diesel compared with a year earlier, on a price increase of roughly 60 percent driven by crude passing $100 a barrel amid the Iran war and attacks on Red Sea shipping [1].
That money is spent before a single crop is sold, which is what makes it an input cost rather than a consumer one, for now.
The supply side is not easing. Kazakhstan's Energy Ministry said on July 23 that producers were reducing daily output after the Caspian Pipeline Consortium suspended loadings at its Black Sea terminal, following drone attacks on tankers on July 17 and 19 [2]. The pipeline carries roughly 80 percent of Kazakh crude exports, and the sharpest decline is at Tengiz, the country's largest field [2].
A war in the Gulf is now removing barrels from a landlocked producer thousands of miles away.
Gasoline gets the political attention because drivers see the number every day. Diesel is the one that reaches everybody, whether they drive or not [3].
