Discussion

avalys: Up 30% is not “nearly doubles”.

throwaway27448: Where are you pulling this number from? I see a clear change from 350 to 585

burnt-resistor: LNG -> urea (fertilizer) -> foodAbout half of all fertilizer is artificially created using fossil fuels.There is no undoing of this price shock because the planting and growing season has already arrived in the Northern Hemisphere.Expect grains to become more expensive and downstream food products like milk and cheese to increase a lot.

gravypod: I thought the US primarily got it's LNG supply from fracking. Is this incorrect?

toomuchtodo: LNG is trading at ~2.5x January spot price rates as of this comment.

carbocation: Haber-Bosch process, for the curious.

Trasmatta: Incredible how Trump ran on a "no wars" and "lower prices" platform. And that people actually believed it.

belorn: Most of the worlds bio fuel that we use to reduce emission in transportation comes from crops farmed to be turned into bio fuel. How will the increase in LNG then do to the price of bio fuels?

alephnerd: That will depend country to country. The US doesn't use urea to the same degree that Brazil, India, and China do. And Brazil (just like the US) doesn't rely on NatGas from the Gulf.It's mostly China and India that are impacted.

adrianN: It's debatable whether biofuels reduce CO2. I think it's better to understand them as subsidies for agriculture.

jmyeet: What's astounding about this entire misadventure is there seemed to be absolutely no plan for what the goals were and what the exit strategy was as well as how to counter the most likely outcomes. I would bet money that military planners had long considered these issues (as they consider many hypotheticals) and those warnings were ignored.For context, about 30% of the fertilizer supply chain relies on the Strait of Hormuz, mainly due to natural gas. Additionally, ~15% of crudel oil exports are effectively blocked. All of this was known beforehand. It was also known that breaking the blockade was essentially impossible. Iran's entire military is designed for this scenario: cheap drones and missiles in huge numbers from cheap launchers and in hardened facilities. Commercial vessels can be attacked with drone boats, basically. The navigable part of the Strait at its narrowest point is less than 8 miles wide.And we're paying about $1 billion per day for all this. But that's OK because somebody is getting rich from contracts to replenish every munition we're using.Invading Iran is geographically impossible.Every single thing I mentioned here has been known for years. Yet here we are. IN a just world, people would hang for all the crimes we've consistently and repeatedly committed against Iran since at least 1953.

Octoth0rpe: The value of the Trump presidency for his voters was never really about those issues, so much as who he was promising to hurt.

Trasmatta: For the core of his base certainly, but he can't win with just them, it's not enough. He won because of the median voter that was mad at the incumbent party for inflation.

bediger4000: You know what else will blow your mind? Mass media excusing Trump from blame, followed by a good Republican showing in the midterms. Trump will be the only president to escape punishment for inflation. Mark my words.

tdeck: The administration didn't even bother manufacturing consent this time and yet the media is acting like they did during the Iraq war. Democratic leaders are weakly pretending like they opposed the war but they really stalled the war powers resolution so it would happen before they forced the vote. Now they get to spend the first half of their statements condemning Iran and the second half weakly protesting about procedural issues and lack of an "exit strategy".

Trasmatta: I expect a very bad showing for Republicans in the midterms. They will almost certainly lose the House, and it's actually becoming possible that they will lose the Senate (which seemed laughable to even consider a year ago).

toomuchtodo: US domestic fossil gas consumers compete with global LNG buyers willing to pay premiums for LNG exported from the US.https://www.reuters.com/markets/tracking-lng-flows-key-globa...https://finance.yahoo.com/news/u-natural-gas-prices-rise-130...

gravypod: Doh! That makes a lot of sense. I don't know how I missed that. Thanks for the links, they are great reads.

SigmundA: Saw posters on /r/Truckers complaining that truck stops where taking advantage of situation to gouge for DEF too on top of diesel before someone pointed out that Iran is the second largest producer of urea, the primary component of DEF. They are not happy right now with $5.00 / gal fuel and higher DEF as well.Worried the administration will use it as an excuse to rollback Nix emissions regulations that mandated DEF usage in diesel engines. They are already not enforcing "deletes" of the emissions systems which is a federal crime.

adrianN: Sooner rather than later we need to decarbonize fertilizer production. Maybe this will speed the process up a bit.

Johnny_Bonk: Indeed, I did some work on that with regards to renewable ammonia production, interesting field to look into if you're curious

WaitWaitWha: Yes urea is used in fertilizer. Yes, the price is going up relative to May 13, 2024 (lowest in 5 years).look at the chart in the article, then click 5Y on the bottom of the chart.Click the + sign between the calendar and wrench iconType in "US Food inflation". It will overlay the "urea" price with the "US food inflation".Yes, urea seems to be a leading indicator. It is nothing like in 2022, yet.

mkw5053: Really interesting. It made me curious to dig in and learn that urea production starts with natural gas. And if you add natural gas to the chart as well urea and natural gas prices generally track together without a lag either way, except natural gas doesn't have the recent uptick seen in urea.I guess the recent move in urea likely isn’t coming from energy costs, something fertilizer-specific, exports, shipping, or supply?Or it's just noise \_(ツ)_/

throwaway85825: The Israeli lobby paid more than the voters.

tdeck: Wars open a lot of opportunities, especially for the worst people.

throwaway85825: The deletes are for recirculation systems not DEF. Recirculation was always a bad idea and anyone who wants diesel for some reason should use DEF.

mikelitoris: What if we collectively pee in buckets (to not dilute it with water and other human by-products) and give them to refineries for purification? /s

pavel_lishin: It looks like it's been pretty stable for three years, after what looks like a spike in the end of 2021.I can't see past 5Y without paying, so I don't know if the past three years was an abnormal low, or if that's the regular cost.

SigmundA: There are three main emissions control systems in diesels, the Exhaust Gas Recirculation (EGR), Diesel Particulate Filter (DPF) and Selective Catalytic Reduction (SCR) which uses Diesel Exhaust Fluid (DEF).Any or all can be "deleted" and is a crime to do so. All 3 systems add complexity and potentially reduce performance which is why those who don't care about emissions like to get rid of them.Before DEF NOx regulations steadily went up engine manufacturers relied on increasing amount of EGR to control NOx until it was not tenable, once DEF systems where implemented they could back of EGR increasing performance but not as much as ripping it all out and tuning for no care of emissions.There are EGR free engines that rely entirely on DEF to control NOx but they are not for on-road use in the US thus far.

throwaway85825: Of course, but mostly it's just recirculation that causes costly engine rebuilds. If it wasn't so expensive no one would delete.Most regulations target emissions at point of sale but don't give a toss if such systems are practical or maintainable. It's sometimes better for the environment to have more emissions but not so much waste from having to buy a new thing more frequently.

SigmundA: No the DEF systems tend to break down and its mandated the engine go into limp mode when they do, this is hated by those that do care fro emissions and one of the biggest reason to delete by truckers.You can find instructions on how to make DEF simulators using raspi's to fool the ECU into think the DEF system is working, people who do care about emissions will still carry these for so they continue on their trip and get to a shop later. The derate was over zealous for sure and was a bad policy.

alephnerd: One of India's SOEs recently paused Urea production due to NatGas issues from the ongoing conflict [0].Additonally, India began reducing purchasing of Russian LNG in late 2025.This led to a double whammy for urea in the short term given how Indian agriculture is heavily Urea dependent (around 70-80% of all fertilizers used in India are Urea).But the same SOE recently announced it's restarted operations earlier today [1].[0] - https://www.tribuneindia.com/news/punjab/gas-shortage-halts-...[1] - https://www.tribuneindia.com/news/bathinda/nfl-bathinda-plan...

esseph: [delayed]

alephnerd: > 2022And that was specifically due to the (ongoing) Russian Invasion of Ukraine. After the 2022 spike, most large countries began building alternative supply chains to reduce impacts from these kinds of hits.For example, the US and Europe largely doesn't use urea unlike Brazil, India, and China.This is also why Asian countries have been investing heavily in Hydrogen energy despite HN's hate boner to the technology.Edit: can't reply> Is it really hydrogen energy if your plan for the hydrogen gas is turning it into ammonia? Would give you another use for it, I supposeThe whole point of building a hydrogen energy market is becuase hydrogen electrolyzers are dual use, and the methodology to leverage and produce "green" ammonia is similar to "green" hydrogen.A non-LNG method to mass produce ammonia based fertilizers has always been called out in most countries Hydrogen energy roadmaps such as India [0].[0] - https://www.adb.org/sites/default/files/publication/1033081/...

extraduder_ire: Is it really hydrogen energy if your plan for the hydrogen gas is turning it into ammonia?Would give you another use for it, I suppose.

D_Alex: 2022 was abnormally high, caused largely by the disruption of gas supplies to Western Europe after sanctions on Russian gas and the destruction of the Nordstream gas pipeline.

toomuchtodo: Resources on the topic you would recommend?

throwaway85825: And what percent of diesel emissions are from diesel passenger vehicles?Emissions reduction efforts would be better spent ensuring repairability. The sunk cost emissions of landfills filled with junk created by planned obsolescence is much worse.Diesel pick ups are not practical vehicles. Let's be honest, it's a hobby. It's always going to be niche and cutting down the last 10% is always the hardest. General aviation still uses lead.

SigmundA: Not sure what your point is, I was talking primarily about Class 8 heavy duty commercial trucks (semi).All the stuff that makes up emissions gear is highly recyclable and if fact some of it very desirable which is why people are getting catalytic converters stolen. So I do not worry about it filling up a land fill.I also don't worry about EV batteries filling landfills because again the are very high grade ore for new batteries, once we have enough in circulation we no longer need to mine much lithium or rare earth.I agree it should be reliable and repairable and forcing the manufacturers to have very long warranties on it seems like a good way to do that, having followed the various generations of DEF systems foe rte last decade the manufacturers have been making big strides because it costs them otherwise and has.I also think airplanes using lead is stupid, but that is a fraction of even private diesel pickup usage let alone commercial trucking. Diesel pickups are at least 10% of all pickup sales now days.

gritspants: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html#generated