So, diesel fuel, even with its polluting specifications, still has its unique position among other energy sources. Diesel engines are characterized by high levels of efficiency, compared to conventional engines, due to their great efficiency and long distances traveled.
In the first week of the Russian military operation, when there were no strict sanctions on diesel fuel from Russia, the price of European diesel was at its highest level in thirty years.
The reasons can be traced back to the closures due to the pandemic, since March 2020, in addition to the decline in investment by Wall Street and international financial companies in oil and gas companies.
Even with the global shutdowns of industry and transportation in March 2020, demand and supply of diesel fuel was balanced. But the sudden closures led to a collapse in demand for diesel, in terms of trucks, cars, construction and even agriculture.
Unprofitable refineries were also closed, in conjunction with declining capacity levels.
Today, diesel reserves around the world are dangerously low, especially in the European Union, which is the world’s largest consumer of diesel.
Where 76% of vehicle engines in France use diesel, the same applies to 50% of European car engines.
Before the war and at the beginning of February, diesel stocks in America, for example, were 21% less than the seasonal average than before the spread of Corona, while in the European Union, they were 8% less, and the same was the case for Asia, and at the beginning of the Ukrainian crisis, stocks were Global diesel fuel is the lowest since 2008.
On the first day of Russian military action, some European giants such as British Petroleum and Shell stopped diesel supplies to Germany under the pretext of fear of shortages.
Turning to refining mechanisms, each type of crude oil is different from the other, so the refineries are designed on this basis, in a way that achieves the maximum benefits from treating a specific type of these types.
Replacing Russian oil from these refineries will require searching for alternatives with similar characteristics, so even with moving away from Russian oil, and providing alternatives from oil derivatives, there will remain a bigger problem.
In a country like Germany, there is suffering in transporting these supplies to refineries in eastern Germany, where it will appear problematic in terms of dealing with the quantities required to be transported.
The largest railway car containing crude usually carries the equivalent of 630 barrels of oil, and even if these cars are lined up one after the other, the number required of them to deliver the required shipments, must extend in its length to cover the entire distance between the cities of Berlin and Hamburg, which is a distance It reaches about 150 miles or 240 kilometers.