What is happening on the other side of the world is starting to have a very real impact on the daily lives of millions of Americans. The chaos in the Middle East and the rapidly escalating war in Ukraine are driving up oil prices. As a result, the average price of a gallon of gasoline in the United States has never been so high this late in the calendar year, and the average price of diesel just keeps surging even deeper into record territory. Of course higher prices are only part of the story. Global supplies have gotten so tight, and so it was inevitable that shortages and rationing would begin to occur. Earlier today, I was shocked to learn that Costco is now rationing motor oil…
As The Drive originally reported, Costco has officially started rationing its motor oil to combat a rapidly deteriorating global lubricant shortage.
The days of grabbing cheap bulk oil are over. A 10-quart box of Kirkland Signature full-synthetic motor oil, which historically retailed for a bargain-basement $30, has skyrocketed to $58. More concerningly, Costco has implemented a strict two-box-per-customer weekly limit. Name brands aren’t faring much better; a six-quart case of Mobil 1 is currently sitting at $44, with purchases capped at five per member to prevent hoarders and scalpers from clearing the shelves.
I can’t remember Costco ever doing this before.
So why has this happened?
Well, it turns out that we normally import a very large percentage of our motor oil from the Middle East…
Modern synthetic motor oil relies heavily on Group III base oils. Historically, the United States imports nearly 44% of its Group III supply directly from three major Persian Gulf producers: Bapco in Bahrain, ADNOC in the United Arab Emirates, and Pearl GTL in Qatar.
The ongoing military entanglement with Iran and the blockade of the Strait of Hormuz have effectively choked off these crucial exports. To compound the supply chain disaster, the massive Pearl GTL facility in Qatar sustained heavy damage from Iranian airstrikes in March 2026, instantly crippling a major portion of global production for at least a year.
Unfortunately, it appears that the global energy crisis is about to get even worse.
On Friday, the Saudis announced that they had been forced to close down their East-West oil pipeline…
Saudi Arabia said Friday that it shut down the kingdom’s crucial East-West crude oil pipeline as a precautionary measure after multiple attacks by drones launched from Iraq.
The drones targeted the pipeline in the Riyadh and Medina regions Thursday morning causing fires and some damage, the Saudi government said. Several people were injured in the attacks, it said.
The Saudis have relied on the East-West pipeline to shift crude oil exports away from Persian Gulf as the U.S. and Iran battle for control over the Strait of Hormuz. The pipeline, which has a capacity of 7 million barrels per day, runs across the kingdom to export terminals on the Red Sea.
Global oil inventories are already incredibly tight.
So this is really big news.
It is being reported that up to 4 percent of the global supply of oil could be affected by this shutdown…
Saudi Arabia risks losing up to 4% of global oil supply unless it restarts its major east-west pipeline to the Red Sea within days, threatening a key export route that has helped the kingdom bypass the wartime shutdown of the Strait of Hormuz, Reuters reported on Sunday.
Drone attacks forced Riyadh to shut the pipeline on Friday, cutting a route that had been carrying around 4 million barrels per day to the Red Sea port of Yanbu.
Yanbu has enough oil stocks to maintain exports for only five to seven days, three industry sources told Reuters, while smaller volumes are also stored at Egyptian ports.
Unfortunately, it appears that the refinery in Yanbu is now out of commission as well.
On Sunday, it was being reported that smoke was “billowing” from that facility…
A major oil refinery in Saudi Arabia has gone up in flames as tensions soar in the Middle East.
The Yanbu refinery in the city of Yanbu, on the Red Sea coast in western Saudi Arabia, has been pictured with smoke billowing above the facility.
Many believe that the Houthis were responsible for that attack, and we also just learned that a military base in southern Saudi Arabia has just been hit…
The Iranian-backed Houthi militant group in Yemen said early Sunday local time that it used drones and missiles to attack a military base in southern Saudi Arabia.
The attack at the Sharurah base targeted “weapons depots and command and control centers that are managing the aggression against our nation and people,” Houthi military spokesman Yahya Saree wrote on X.
The Houthis are in all-out war mode.
As I detailed for my core supporters on Friday, the Houthis were able to capture more than 3,000 square kilometers of territory in Yemen in just 24 hours.
The Saudi-backed forces that are fighting the Houthis are collapsing, and Saudi leaders have been pleading with the Trump administration for help…
Saudi Arabia is urging Washington to take direct military action against Iran-backed Houthis, Fox News Digital learned after the terrorist group seized key positions along Yemen’s Bab al-Mandab Strait on Friday.
The dramatic strengthening of Houthi’s positioning along the coastline of Yemen is in one of the world’s most important shipping choke points — a narrow passage that links the Red Sea with the Gulf of Aden, which has been used as a bypass as the Iran war continues to severely disrupt shipping, especially of oil, through the Strait of Hormuz.
The rapid advance on Friday triggered urgent discussions at the highest levels in Riyadh and Washington, and a source familiar with the matter tells Fox News Digital that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman urged President Donald Trump to take military action against the Houthis.
Of course the Trump administration already has their hands full with Iran.
Traffic through the Strait of Hormuz is almost entirely paralyzed at this point, and there is no end in sight for the war.
Ominously, we are being told that there is solid evidence that entities in China “supplied Iran with high-quality satellite imagery of a US Air Force base in Jordan” just prior to an Iranian ballistic missile attack on July 17th…
Chinese entities supplied Iran with high-quality satellite imagery of a US Air Force base in Jordan both before and after Tehran launched a deadly ballistic missile attack on the facility on July 17, The Wall Street Journal reported Saturday, citing US officials familiar with the matter.
The officials, who declined to identify the Chinese entities, said Washington had linked the satellite imagery to the strike, providing what they described as the clearest evidence yet that Chinese support for Tehran during the war had contributed to the deaths of US troops. They stopped short, however, of accusing Beijing of directly participating in the attack, according to the Journal.
Senior US officials reportedly brought up the imagery from the Muwaffaq Salti Air Base with their Chinese counterparts, but Beijing rejected the allegation and demanded that Washington provide evidence, the Journal cited its sources as saying.
This is an extremely alarming development, because now it is very clear that China is helping Iran fight us.
That puts us dangerously close to the sort of military conflict with China that I have been warning about for years.
Sadly, we are also dangerously close to a directly military conflict with Russia.
A little while ago, a Russian drone hit a train that was just minutes behind a train that was carrying Boris Johnson, former Swedish premier Carl Bildt and other prominent western leaders…
BORIS Johnson has blasted “warped” Vladimir Putin after he escaped across the Polish border when a Russian drone struck a train minutes behind his.
The former Prime Minister, who is understood to be unharmed, was travelling back from a security conference in Kyiv.
Former Swedish premier and foreign minister Carl Bildt, who was on the same train as Johnson, said their train was “just minutes” behind the one hit by a Russian drone.
“This wasn’t our train [that was hit], but the one just minutes after us by the [Polish] border crossing,” said Bildt.
German Chancellor Merz’s primary security adviser and security advisers from the UK, France, and Italy were on the train as well.
Also riding the train was former CIA director David Petraeus…
Ukraine’s state railway operator says top Western figures — including former prime minister Boris Johnson and ex-CIA director David Petraeus — were at a west Ukrainian train station shortly before Russia struck a Warsaw-bound train there.
“Shortly before the locomotive was hit at the Ukrainian-Polish border, a diplomatic train was at Yagodyn station,” Ukraine’s rail operator Ukrzaliznytsia says in a statement.
“There were, among others, security advisers from several EU member states and former European leaders on board, including former UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson. In another train that was at Yagodyn station at the very moment of the attack was former CIA Director David Petraeus.”
Can you imagine what would have happened if the Russians had struck that train instead of the train behind it?
Footage of the train that the Russians did hit shows that it was severely damaged.
So it looks like we dodged a bullet.
But we continue to creep even closer to a nightmare scenario in Europe.
Many of our NATO allies have been preparing for war, and Russian President Vladimir Putin just warned that if any European nations send troops to Ukraine it will mean “war with Russia”…
President Vladimir Putin warned Europe on Friday that sending any troops to help Ukraine would mean an escalation of the conflict and “war with Russia.”
UPI reports Putin laid out his stark warning while speaking to reporters at the BRICS summit in New Delhi.
“Now, they say they are thinking of how to deploy troops to Ukraine,” he told reporters, as quoted by state-run news agency TASS as seen by UPI. “This would mean a war with Russia.”
All of the pieces of the puzzle are falling into place, but a lot of people out there still don’t realize that what we are witnessing is literally World War III.
For quite a while, many of us that live here in the United States could safely ignore the drama on the other side of the planet because it was not significantly affecting our daily lives.
But now it is.
If you go to Costco today, there will be a strict limit on how much motor oil that you can purchase.
Of course this is just the beginning.
Global events are starting to spiral completely out of control, and a tremendous amount of chaos is on the horizon.
Michael’s new book entitled “10 Prophetic Events That Are Coming Next” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and you can subscribe to his Substack newsletter at michaeltsnyder.substack.com.
About the Author: Michael Snyder’s new book entitled “10 Prophetic Events That Are Coming Next” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com. He has also written nine other books that are available on Amazon.com including “Chaos”, “End Times”, “7 Year Apocalypse”, “Lost Prophecies Of The Future Of America”, “The Beginning Of The End”, and “Living A Life That Really Matters”. When you purchase any of Michael’s books you help to support the work that he is doing. You can also get his articles by email as soon as he publishes them by subscribing to his Substack newsletter. Michael has published thousands of articles on The Economic Collapse Blog, End Of The American Dream and The Most Important News, and he always freely and happily allows others to republish those articles on their own websites. These are such troubled times, and people need hope. John 3:16 tells us about the hope that God has given us through Jesus Christ: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” If you have not already done so, we strongly urge you to invite Jesus Christ to be your Lord and Savior today.
