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falcor84today at 12:35 AM1 replyview on HN

Is there anything in that chain that actually requires petroleum and couldn't be replaced with alternative with similar properties and prices?


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nine_ktoday at 12:57 AM

Yes: the time. It's spring time, when most crops are being sowed, of have been sowed and started growing actively. They won't wait several months until the production of fertilizers switches to electrically produced hydrogen, and tractors are upgraded to run off electric power. As the crops ripen, they won't wait until combine harvesters and trucks are converted to run off electric power. Nobody in the agricultural world has a few billions lying around to build massive solar capacity, battery capacity, and redesign the agricultural machinery, all at impossibly breakneck pace.

Instead I suggest that they will buy the fuel at higher prices, and sell less produce, and also milk and meat which are downstream from feed crops, at higher prices. More than that, in a bout of bitter irony, the West might need to lift sanctions from Russian oil, and maybe ask Russia to drill and sell more.

This, or the US should somehow defeat IRGC and defeat / appease the Iranian Army, and unblock the strait. I wonder if it's going to cost less even along the monetary dimension.

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