Oil, Food, and Energy Crisis: Why This Supply Shock Is Just Getting Started with Sulaiman Ahmed

Originally published at: https://peakprosperity.com/oil-food-and-energy-crisis-why-this-supply-shock-is-just-getting-started-with-sulaiman-ahmed/

Recently, I joined Sulaiman Ahmed to discuss the converging crises we’re facing in energy, oil, food, and the broader economy. We dove into what’s really happening with oil markets right now — the futures games, the inventory draws, the Strait of Hormuz situation — and why this isn’t just another price spike but a genuine supply shock unlike anything we’ve seen. I broke down how the missing barrels, LNG, fertilizers, sulfur, helium, and damaged infrastructure are creating a polycrisis that’s going to ripple through everything from farming to manufacturing to daily life, hitting developing nations hardest but sparing no one entirely.

We covered the realities of inventories being drained, the long road to recovery, even if tensions ease, and the tangible impacts on food production and global supply chains that people need to understand now. It’s a complex, chaotic picture, but one we have to face squarely.

Check out the full interview below!

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And it’s for these reasons I was up early on a Sunday morning watering the permaculture plantings. I discovered recently that there is a variety of arugula that is perennial in my area. That is among the items watered.

I remain too uninformed to attempt to profit in any way by investing around energy, and focus instead on what I can do to reduce spending instead of increasing income at the moment. I do however have several property / land based income options in the works bit it will be a while longer before they are complete. Honey sales used to be several thousand $ a year so building the beeyard back up has begun. I should be able to pay my insurance and property taxes with honey. Preparing a rental spot or two for RV’s or Tiny homes at a rural agri property is another. In the mean time the agri lease pays the electric and taxes.

I plan on a new roof soon and it seems like the perfect time to install solar vents or turbines of some type to vent the heat in my roof “attic” space. This will greatly reduce energy needs.

Rounded up all the pulses in the house and packed them for Long Term Storage. This was a needed balance to the grains.

Poly-crises require poly-responses

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Ha! Just the other day I was thinking to myself - man it would be cool of Chris was able to do Suli’s podcast.

Abracadabra!

New interviewer, good interview to have out on the free-and-open side of things. Good to get this information out in the wild.

I’m beginning to hear the first trickles of “uh-oh, polycrisis” rumblings elsewhere. For example, another podcast I’m listening to has ads from a medical preparedness company (jase case) carefully explaining the delay effects of oil tankers on their business and why now is time to get with it. Meanwhile, I’m writing the last few checks for last month’s online ‘last minute’ purchases. We’re a month ahead of the rest of the month-ahead folks – and it feels freekin’ great.

In the rush for the door, it’s good to have casually stepped out ten minutes before anyone noticed.

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I’ m thinking of changing my name to “noah” - perhaps “vin diesel noah” VDN.

Because i sometimes feel when selling a diesel supply ark to complacent corporate and political leaders in oz, that i am operating from instinct not from maths and resilience expertise. I have got an ark prepared, but it is grounded in maths not prophesy, and offered to a complacent and blind population, who are heading for food and oil shortage when our current 30 days diesel runs out.

I had “prophetic instinct” (ie maths foresight) to negotiate my own LNG -diesel swap scheme using LNG to power oil expansion at closest refinery at Balikpapan south kalimantan that has been upgraded to 350,000 bpd so has scale to make material dint in AU diesel shortage and create short path resilient supply chain remediation that survives even malacca straight and s china seas disruptions. We have foolishly squandered our refineries from 6 to 2 so AU need refineries quick and Balikpapan is closest with spare capacity. Got presidential support on Indonesian side and two generals waiting to talk to AU. Plus been invited by Indonesia government to work with their task force - already activating offgrid community wells, idle fields and stranded PODS (Plan of Delivery). The former coop wells only add up to 2% of AU demand - immediately operational - but by cooperation or coercion. I only use them to cooperatively build an indigenous to indigenous neighbourly ark to activate bigger remediation pathway on small scale, plus to keep emergency services up in a few remote tribal councils. The middle idle fields could yield up to 100% but too late - end of decade. The latter stranded PODs are the sweet spot with scale to build an ark for an AU city or two, up to 100,000 bpd, if accelerated as big oil project, using AU expertise gained and proven over last decade squeezing last drops of oil out our aged AU reserves - PODs having already gone through 2-3 years surveys, test drilling, environment assessments, planning and approvals but got stranded by price drops, reorgs, capital exhausted. They are ready to execute - can be accelerated - to return oil in 6-12 month.

As noah, i prefer small scale indigenous to indigenous ark to save a few individuals of broadest species, since it also includes social resilience required to cooperate with community run wells (dayak headhunters to desert lore keepers). My crisis priority, reinforced by covid, is not crisis-as-suffering but to avert crisis-as-coercion so i include the social angle in the ark to build consensual frameworks and monitoring for drift from true resilience to regulatory compliance theatre or worse to technocratic dystopia.

Do i experience maths as if prophesy because some have the goal of technocratic dystopia instead of real resilience? I wonder.

AU uses about 1m bpd - about 350,000 bpd diesel. Our PM negotiated 300m litres assurance from Brunei, Malaysia, Singapore thats adds up to 3 days. We have 4b litres in ships - they use litres instead of barrels for assurance - so adds up to 30-50 odd days diesel before rationing and food price spikes. Seems like a huge bet is being made on hormuz opening soon.

For some, it is just lack of multi perspective - even energy politicians and economists lack resilience and crisis viewpoints. Our energy minister gets social angle that is great.But political and corporate structures incentivise short termism and discount “low likelihood- catastrophic impact” risk remediation in favour of using strategic reserves to keep up calm appearances and avert the inevitable public reckoning or panic. So we have BAU on edge of a cliff. Some complacency is just lack of caring about the little people - others surrender caring due to lack of agency. Some see opportunity to advance green ideology and discount counter force and need for balance. Or is it all driven heirarchically through US and corporate greed and meglamania through epstein puppets or the global cabal dreams of technocratic dystopia.

So i just letting story unfold at pace it sees fit. Generals are waiting. Cosmic force is really driving things even if the maths makes sense. I am not Noah just a resilience practitioner with enough maths and curiosity and reverence for culture and life to be inspired to try to look at the world as it is from multiple perspectives - social and material - dystopic and utopic - balanced and chaotic - dark and light - coercive and cooperative - cyclic and progressive - long and short horizons - small and large scales.

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