Inside Ukraine's Refinery Bombings and the Hidden Impact on U.S. Politics 

One reason is missing: Damaging an oil refinery with a small drone is a lot easier than damaging a tank production. Even a tiny warhead can cause a fire there

Have you seen Soviet tank factories like Uralvagonzavod? They are ginormous, many square miles wide, with hangars of reinforced concrete and underground bunkers. They were designed to withstand a nuclear attack. Compare it to an oil refinery distillation column. It's a tall metal tube filled with flammable materials. If you have a limited amount of drones, the target is obvious

US elections hinging on short term economic outcomes is one of the single *most* frustrating things about the US political system. Economies move relatively slowly and you really *can't* get a short term fix for free at that scale. It's also one of those problems that is the most difficult to do anything about

One thing about the Oilprice, it is going down, since March, thanks to the Bombing of the Oilrefineries. Russia has a Problem: It needs foreign Money, Oilproducts have a higher Market Value then Raw oil. Russia needs to sell more Raw Oil to get enough money since they have to BUY now Oilproducts. The Price hike was thanks to reduction of the Opec, not the Bombing.

A drone attacking a refinery gives the most bang for the buck. OPEC cut production in March to keep oil in the $80-$90 range. Any disruption of supply from Russia means OPEC doesn't have to cut as much as it would have.

Ukraine hitting refineries is creating a glut in crude oil. That should keep prices down and moving lower. Ukraine is hitting refined products which are largely used domestically (in russia). At the same time, Ukraine is not damaging crude production, so ruZzia can produce oil, but not refine as much. The glut they're building up will ultimately end up on the global market and bring prices down.

😂😂😂😂”Stormy” made me snort a mouthful of coffee out my nose 😂😂😂😂

The USA public is like a financially illiterate person paying one credit card with a another. It's frankly embarrassing.

If you want to support Ukraine that's awesome, but you can't dictate to them how to fight the war. It's their lives, their homes, their lands.

I feel like that NSC guy was being very specific in his language. "We do not encourage or enable" Ukraine to make strikes in Russia is not the same as discouraging or telling them to stop.

Don't doomscroll and wimp because it is what enemy wants you to do! Instead donate to the defenders and enjoy the nice weather! It will help soldiers and you!

however a lot of the press is reporting that the damage to russian refining is now seen to be lowering oil prices!

Again, the US has never said they directly asked them not to hit refineries as in “hey don’t hit oil refineries or else won’t support you.” It was never black and white, it was a strategic conversation. As in we think the best way to use your resources is hitting these targets. Then Ukraine says we think it is strategically beneficial so we’re going to do it. Then the US says ok, but don’t use our weapons. Same thing with Lloyd Austin, he never said they asked them to stop. He answered a question on whether he thought hitting refineries was a good strategy or not. You people don’t seem to understand the difference between discussing strategy and asking them not to do it. Strategic discussions take months with many parties and they shoot their opinions back and forth constantly. This does not mean the US asked Ukraine no to. Let’s be very clear when you suggest America asked them not to hit refineries, like in the literal sense, it is not a request it is a statement or demand. When the country that is overwhelmingly providing you with the most support they don’t request things and Ukraine wouldn’t do it if they did. This is why Ukraine doesn’t use American weapons in Russia. Not because they asked, they said if you do this we will not support you. This is very different than conversation’s between friends. The US would prefer them to not hit refineries because of the ramifications in the upcoming election and what that would mean for winning the war, and they probably even expressed that preference over discussions over strategies. However if the US asked them not to do it, I promise you they would not be doing it. The lack of understanding how this stuff works and the constant bs narrative is exhausting.

The campaign is also meant to drive up domestic prices of diesel so that it’s more difficult for the russian harvest to take place.

I guess it's safe to say that Ukraine's tactics are getting more and more refined

Most recent data shows that by taking out refineries that more crude will be on the market bringing the overall cost of oil down.

Its Wilkes - "Bear"

Why have I been hearing Russia has to pump more oil because they can't charge refined oil prices. So they are flooding the market with discount crude driving oil prices down?!??

Id probably argue the opposite Oil prices have been falling since April whilst Russian refining capacity has been reduced by 14% Here in the UK the petrol pump prices have been falling slightly Ukraine is damaging Russian oil refineries not oil wells. Hence it is finished oil products that are being affected in Russia. This is causing them to suspend the export of finished oil products and import them What is unclear is how much additional global refining capacity there is. It appears there is sufficient capacity at the moment If Ukraine could take out 100% of Russian refinery capacity then we might see some effect It would be interesting to see some analysis of what that limit would be

your videos are so great man, always a little extra perspective. As someone who follows this conflict pretty closely I get tired of the surface level opinions I hear in my day to day life. Its just refreshing to hear someone take a dynamic of this war and expand on it for a few minutes and I always walk away with something to think about. Thank you

Energy prices in the US area not, as far as I can tell, from the data, increasing. Following the futures market, I see from Thursday's report that WTI prices are down. In fact, as of yesterday, they were about $5 per barrel down from their recent peak, which was not a particularly high level. Natural gas prices are similarly moderate with no upward pressure I can see. Gasoline prices are about where they were a year ago.

Inflation is down…. Except for housing, food, and fuel. Those are up and still climbing. No one talks about that.

My wife , “What are you watching? That guys voice sounds like a robot, is that even a real person? Me, “I’m watching this because of the excellent and thoughtful analysis of the situation in Ukraine, robot narrative voice or not. Good job as always.

For one, yes it is pronounced wilks bear. Definitely smart to go with saying all 3. Ok next PA town to try is Bala Cynwood

The main news outlets seemed to ignore the fact that Russia doesn't really export any *_refined_** oil products.* Their exports are overwhelmingly *_crude_** oil* and natural gas. *The strikes wouldn't affect world oil prices* and consequently the U.S. election. That fact, lost on most commentators, caused the whole story to make little sense.

I’m a recent subscriber and I gotta say your channel is quickly becoming one of my favorites. You’re articulate and make good arguments. Great work!

If you can keep the russian military short of fuel that is an immediate effect. Even stopping arms production entirely would be a very delayed effect. You have to atritt a lot of what is in the field and renovation/repair pipeline before that starts to show an effect. So why wouldn't Ukraine keep trying to hit the fuel supply pipeline. But it looks like since the latest US funding round was released and arms supplies started to arrive in Ukraine there has been a switch back to military targets. So maybe Ukraine was less combatative about this than during the period where nothing from the US was arriving in Ukraine?

Interestingly, Target corporation yesterday announced a store-wide rollback of prices on many common consumer goods. It will be interesting if any other retailers, such as Walmart, follow suit. It also raises the question of how much the recent bout of inflation may have been caused by corporate greed?

Gas prices have actually fallen over 50 cents at the local southern California Costcos this May, which is strange because the end of spring usually brings large spikes in gas prices as the refineries switch production to cleaner and more expensive summer blend. Prices should have spiked even higher after OPEC production cuts and strong demand. Local gas market data doesn't mean everyone is seeing gas price reductions, but it seems to me those predictions of lower gas prices as a result of the strikes on ruzzian refineries appear to be coming true. Great job Ukraine! Keep lighting up those ruzzian refineries. 🇺🇸🇺🇦 Slava Ukraini 🇺🇸🇺🇦

I think that Prof Spaniel's videos are probably the most analytical, and intelligent on the subject of the Ukraine war.

I think the video did not mention clearly enough (it did, but not clearly enough) the difference between targeting refineries and crude oil production. Disabeling the former will hardly influence the crude oil prices, contrary to the latter. Let Russia export crude as much as possible, at or under the price cap. India and several other countries can refine and take the bulk of the profit. Prices at the pump will hardly be affected. Another point, do Americans really think that gas prices (volatile as they are, and hardly influenced by presidents) are really more important than their democracy and freedoms? I canot fathom that.

I wish you would show the depot strikes with some lasting icon on the map. Watching a single dot zoom around the map isn’t great

One of my favourite channels, always waiting for a video to drop. Keep up the good work!

Another high intelligent production analysis, the day is saved with mr Spaniel.

Any truth to the point that Ukraine hitting oil REFINERIES, won’t actually bring the price of oil up because it only affects what Russia can refine and sell for profit. While it doesn’t truly hurt their crude oil production or holdings, so it merely increases their costs to ship the crude oil to be processed elsewhere. While only changing the price or holdings a negligible amount internationally? (My knowledge of the subject is average, this is a theory I heard proposed )

Bless you for posting these. And I just heard you use 'whom' as I was typing. Bonus point for that.

Just purchased both of your books. Thank you for the exceptional videos!

The US inflation measures published by the government do not include food or fuel prices. The latest ones preferred by the US government also do not include housing costs. The prices for durable good (what the numbers try to measure) have stabilized but if you have looked at Food, Energy or Housing costs in the US they are well over 20% cumulative in 3 years.

I'm usually impressed by your reporting but this video has left me a little confused. Can you explain the connection between oil production and oil refineries please? I was under the impression that oil came from the ground and was extracted by drilling. I've never heard of a refinery that produces crude oil and I'm not sure how that could be achieved. My understanding was that oil refineries produced fuel and lubricants. Also, I've never heard of tankers travelling across the oceans with a load of gasoline or diesel. I always thought they transported crude and that fuels were produced by each country that uses them. Is this incorrect? If this is correct, then how would bombing oil refineries reduce oil production? Again, maybe my misunderstanding, but I would have expected just the opposite. If Russia can't refine its oil, what it going to do with it? Put it back in the ground maybe? Looking forward to learning more about this.

4:19 - I am from Pennsylvania and it just occurred to me that I don't know how to pronounce that town's name either 😂 I think it's the "bear" pronunciation? Who knows.😅

As someone from PA, your third pronunciation of Wilkes Barre was the correct one.

How does bombing refineries drive oil prices up? It would seem to me, ,lack of them would produce a glut of oil, thereby driving prices down.

The refineries in Russia produce gasoline, kerosene and other distillates used INSIDE Russia. The destruction of the oil refineries has caused fuel shortages in Russia without changing the petroleum. Russia does not export gasoline or the specific distillates. Moreover, the initial story about US pressuring Ukraine that appeared in the Financial Times has identified as Russian disinformation reported by a journalist who is known to act as a mouthpiece for Russian propaganda. The Financial Times even apologized for failing to check the source of the story.

William Spaniel Thanks

Really wish your books were available as audiobooks. I discovered this channel because I prefer listening over reading

Thank William real pleasure hearing your analysis

Thank you for the insight

Thanks for this! And one thing i find so fuckin funny is how putin keeps moving his "red line" without consequences! Might aswell invade Russia soon, putin will probably blame it on the moon people.

man I really enjoy your content and how often you upload. Just want to say thank you.

Hey William. You said that what happened to Shoigu wasn't really a demotion, yet all we hear from Russia are constant new arrests made that seems to target only his people. Am I wrong or Putin and his oligarchs actually decided to get rid of Shoigu?

This video is a classic. Thanks so much for the great work!!!

Thank you for another excellent video!

@william spaniel, what you omitted was i believe last fall 2023 the russians passed a law banning exports of diesel and gasoline out of russia. reason being russian petroleum companies make more selling it outside russia than selling it inside russia because of the subsidies they no longer get from selling it domestically. so hitting russian refineries has no impact on international crude prices rising. it only affects russian domestic economy. reason being the russian government use to pay the russian petroleum companies subsidies to sell gasoline and diesel at artificially lower prices. with the war, russian budget was stretched so the companies no longer got the subsidies so they started selling it outside of russia rather than sell at loss. so it cause fuel prices to rise in russia last september, so russia passed a law banning export of diesel and gasoline and forced the companies to sell to russian domestic market at low price points. so hitting russian refineries only affects the supply inside russia now.

I might be misreading but the US Strategic Bombing campaign concluded that targetting raw resources and the labour supply is what deminishes production, not precision targetting the final assembly.

Good analysis. Thanks.

I'm that one person who lived in Wilkes-Barre (born and raised), honestly I've heard it said all those ways. Just really depends on your location and how the sentence flows. I personally say Wilkes-Bear for the most part sometimes switching for one of the others depending on how my accent works that day.

U totes pronounced my home town perfectly the 1st time!! A +

Part of the issue for Biden us that a lot of the usual metrics for measuring the economy are not actually showing the problem. Sure the stock market and the economy as a whole are good, but most of that good is not actually going to the bulk of the population, it mostly getting swallowed up by big business and finance. While unemployed is low, companies are not actually hiring all that much. There are lots of job listings but most seem to be fishing for nonexistent unicorn candidates, actual hiring metrics are super low considering that sheer amount of listings.

9 cars for every 10 people is wild. Why do Americans have that many cars?

I pass by Wilkes Barre in WVa all the time driving up north ... Only place that has a Toll for the highway

Excellent William

Lucidity + Story telling = changing things for the better. TY! (apologies for absence of both)

Thank you ,thank,you.great content

I always thought it pronounced wilkes-burry. For the longest time I didn't realize that it wasn't called Wilksbury! Good content as always

"Stormy situation" very good

A interesting prospective on a single issue without visible corruption.

Good video.

I have heard (don't remember where) that Russian refineries going up in flames puts pressure on Russia to export more crude oil or face long term crude oil production problems. This in turn drives global oil prices down and negates any adverse effects on oil product prices from Ukrainian attacks? Gas prices in my neck of the woods (Denmark) have been dropping slightly recently.

Good reporting. Thank you. Strong democracy.

very fine analysis

The best discussion I’ve seen about US economic sentiment. Thank you.

Good job

I love it! I also emphasize "pronOUnciation" (4:21) when I use the word in speech. My joke is, "I'm a stickler for proper pronOUnciation."

What Austin completely failed to understand is that heavy industry workshops are full of heavy machinery. It takes a lot of explosives to even dent such equipment. The Allies found that out during WW2. Even if the Ukrainians could hit those factories. And they can't. Because they don't have the range.

I just love your videos!!!

Danke!

Except that disabling Russian refineries does not decrease the amount of oil that Russia exports. The key word here is "refineries" rather than "production". Russia does not want to stop any oil production, any wells they shut down are more likely than not, never coming back, at least until the war is over anyway. Since Russia has a limited amount of storage available which means that the oil that is no longer getting refined needs to be exported in order for production to stay at the current levels. Russia does have some wiggle room but not very much so short to medium term less refinery capacity will mean higher crude oil exports.

A couple of issues. One, you can't have consumption without production and the whole point of an economy is to produce. Government workers don't produce, they consume. The recent declines in the unemployment rate was primarily driven by increased hiring of government "workers" and health workers, the latter relying on government transfer payments for their compensation. The actual number of productive workers is in decline or not increasing fast enough to create more wealth than is being spent by the government. Which brings me to point 2, inflation has nothing to do with the increasing prices of oil or anything else, increasing prices are a consequence of inflation, not a cause. In the 70's the price of a litre of petrol was 15c (I'm Australian) and today it is pushing $2. What's changed? Not the litre of petrol, no shrinkflation there, so it must be the money. Inflation is money decreasing in value and that is under the control of the government, they print it.

@Gametheory101 Would be interested to hear as to what you'd do when faced with such a dilemma & how you'd analyse and weight your decisions.

It's Wilkes *BEAR-Y* Born and raised there. Live right across the Susquehanna from it now.

Good call regarding Wilkes-Barre. I live in upstate NY and often drive past Wilkes-Barre on my way to visit my father in Lebanon county PA. For years I *assumed* it was pronounced "Wilkes Bar". My father's wife is a local and calls it "Wilkes-Barry". I was quite surprised!

The question is: Are gasoline supplies refinery limited (worldwide)? or is it more a function of the price of oil and demand driving gasoline price? If the former, then we may see higher gas prices. If the latter (which IMO is the actual situation), we may only see short term price spikes until western refiners up their supply to make up for the Russian shortfall in refining capacity and gasoline exports. And actually we will see LOWER prices longer term, because Russia will have to export all the oil that they can't refine, leading to higher exports, lower oil prices, and subsequently lower gas prices.

Just to ask, but could forcing Russia to dump oil on the global market due to refineries being down not also reduce oil prices (at least temporarily)? There's a limit to how much can be stocked and turning off pumping installations is detrimental, so could these bombings push Russia to dump their crude just to not exceed their own storage capacity due to those refineries being out of commission? (It's a bit like that moment a few years ago when oil was traded for negative prices on the global market.) Secondly, if refining oil in Russia is/became considerably more expensive (Due to, I don't know, worker wages skyrocketing perhaps), could this situation also result in the overall production cost of refined products to go down?

That 4.1% inflation is complete cap. I calculated mine to be 17% on purchasing history.

0:42 I do appreciate the appearances of this animation. 🙂

william, when did you record this? The news in germany said the oil prices went even down... I'm confused now

Striking the refineries causes oil prices to go down, since Russia must export more unrefined product. Thus there is no dilemma for Ukraine. That was a surprising oversight for this video.

lol former PA resident here, I went straight to the comments after that pronunciation 😂😂 looking for those same comments 4:25

I live in Norway and I did some math. The other day gas was $8.99 a gallon and diesel was $8.41 a gallon. I wouldn't mind if the prices didn't go up any more. There's no public transport where I live and nowhere to charge an EV.

I thought most oil shipped around the world was crude oil and most refined oil is used domestically. Also I thought the bulk of Russian exports is crude oil or natural gas. What percentage of refined gas sales world wide not including domestic use would historically be attributed to Russia?

What about quantitative easing

I 100% support Ukraine and it's targeting oil refineries. That being said, I often felt that the oil refineries attacks were a blackmail of sorts, "we're attacking these refineries, unless you give us a reason not to."

What country actually imports gasoline which is a specific petroleum distillates? Countries import petroleum then refine it to produce gas, kerosene etc. Can you imagine what it would be like to a oil supertanker filled with gasoline?

Most people pronounce Wilkes-Barre as either Wilkes-BEAR or Wilkes-BERRY. Fun fact: Wilkes-Barre is also right next to Scranton, where the 155mm shells we send to Ukraine are made.

Complicated is an understatement.

Interested in your thoughts on the 'Good Times Bad Times' video released today. In it, he discusses Ukraine's attack on oil refiners, affecting Russia's higher-margin oil products and forcing them to sell less profitable crude oil. This has led to a drop in refined oil sales and an increase in crude oil. Would this still have the same effect on the globe markets? Maybe places like India, China, and Saudi Arabia can buy cheap crude oil and refine it themselves or the markets.

Wow, I am in the 12th percentile of the youngest public of your channel. Apparently I'm weird with interest in geopolitics as a young adult. Most get there only after 65.

Nobody cares that you’re first.

🇺🇸 hello I saw oil in the thumb nail is this for me 🤗 🦅

Presumably Russian refinery products are not exported..? If so, then I doubt that Ukraine's strategy would have much if any affect on crude oil spot prices... only reasoned responses please 😄