The overlooked factor making everything more expensive
A sign displays the price of diesel fuel at a Shell gas station in San Diego, California. | Zoe Meyers/Bloomberg via Getty Images This story appeared in Today, Explained, a daily newsletter that helps you understand the most compelling news and stories of the day. Subscribe here. Diesel hit a record $6.40 per gallon this morning, up 73 percent from a year ago. “Not really my problem,” you might be thinking. “I don’t drive a semi or excavator.” But you know who does drive semis and excavators and all the other machines that rely on diesel fuel? The people who farm your food, ferry your online orders, and repave the streets in your neighborhood. All that means the price of diesel trickles down into virtually every segment of the economy. (We’ll get into that a bit more shortly.) Like gas prices, diesel has been rising since the US war with Iran began more than six months ago. But this particular surge was also driven by two incidents in particular: an attack on Saudi Arabia’s East-West pipeline, which has made it costlier and more time-consuming to get oil out, and a Ukrainian drone campaign against Russian oil infrastructure, which has forced major refineries to scale back production. In the...
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