The Group of Seven Nations agreed Friday to release 100 million barrels of oil from its stockpiles—following a desperate plea from the White House.
The G7 held an emergency meeting Friday morning to discuss global energy costs. The discussion came in the wake of a pressing call between Donald Trump and French President Emmanuel Macron, during which the U.S. leader asked for assistance amid the current oil crisis and floated the idea of banning U.S. diesel exports, according to CBS Chief Foreign Affairs Correspondent Margaret Brennan.
Donald Trump announced after the meeting that “Europe has just agreed to release a massive amount of their heavily stocked Diesel Oil. The process will begin immediately.”
The European barrels are expected to hit the market over the next four months.
Depends on how much society is willing to sacrifice. One year isn’t long, but you could conceivably get just about every car and van off diesel, get just about everyone off heating oil (which is just diesel), go crazy on electric trains, dramatically decrease construction and electrify what you can there, and switch backup generators to gas (which doesn’t really help the climate of course but helps with no diesel). The biggest near term issue is likely heavy transit. You could displace some with trains and petrol/electric vans, but there’s going to be serious rationing going on and supply chains will be hanging on by a thread. Farming equipment also a big issue. Hydrogen might be able to start replacing diesel for these uses but within a year is crazy ambitious. This would be hard to do in a decade.
Regardless, we need to approach this from a “war economy” standpoint, so I like the question.