Iran oil revenue soars as it's the only exporter out of Hormuz | Hacker News Reader

Iran oil revenue soars as it's the only exporter out of Hormuz

financialpost.com

128 pointsvrganj127 comments

Tanker from Russia arrived here in Philippines, and it seems we will be getting oil from Russia now. Major geopolitical failure by the US.

Art of the Deal

> Major geopolitical failure by the US.

Nah, soft power is out. Bluntly, if the Philippines strays too far from US interests, they can be strangled, first economically, then militarily.

Of course, that’s what US will do to its old allies.

If the Us keeps attacking its allies economically and militarily the petrodollar will crumble and those trillions of dollars of debt will start to be a heavy burden

So it's all going to plan then?

If dollar crumbles, the debt becomes lighter, no?

Tons of countries buy the dollar bond because it’s a safe bet. It’s how the world does finance.

If that stops, then the world stops buying dollars. And then America has to start justifying why a printed dollar justifies buying an import from China or Europe of real valuable goods

People all over the world are suffering right now.

And they know who to blame. The U.S. and Israel.

This is a long term, probably irreversible, disaster for both countries.

Good for them. Defending their country from an unprovoked invasion.

The hypocrisy of the west is astounding. I hope this is creates a breach between US / Israel relationships. Israel has become pure evil.

Israel always was, at least for the last 2 decades. We all (including me) were just too blind and stupid to see through it.

If you want to form an opinion around Israel, I would've suggested, in better times, visiting the Red Crescent center in Doha accommodating and treating Gazan women and children.

Lots of people did see it, but politicians were way too tied up with Israel to allow even the slightest criticism. I hope that's finally going to change now, because Israel really needs to be reined in. (Iran too, the US too, and Russia too.)

Unprovoked? They have been waging a proxxy war against the west since the 80s?

> Good for them. Defending their country from an unprovoked invasion.

It's hardly unprovoked.

> The hypocrisy of the west is astounding.

How is it at all hypocritical for the west to want to stop a regime of terrorists like the one in Iran?

> Israel has become pure evil.

Israel didn't murder over 30,000 of their own citizens in 2 days by firing automatic weapons into crowds of protesters, that was the Islamic regime in Iran. When it comes to western values in the middle east Israel is very obviously doing better that any other country in the region, despite Israels issues.

While Israel is not a regime of terrorists ? They are starving out children for christ's sake. Are these the western values you're talking about ?

Or, okay, I understand. They are expanding and occupying the colony of Israel, that is quite a western value indeed, I'll give you that.

> They are starving out children for christ's sake.

Israel has facilitated sufficient aid into Gaza to prevent starvation.

> They are expanding and occupying the colony of Israel, that is quite a western value indeed, I'll give you that.

Do you share the view of the Islamic Regime in Iran that Israel should not exist?

> Israel has facilitated sufficient aid into Gaza to prevent starvation.

Should I believe the UN, or some random zionist online ?

> Do you share the view of the Islamic Regime in Iran that Israel should not exist?

I certainly believe they are the source of aggression, violence, pain and misery in the region. They are constantly invading and occupying the homeland of other people, as they are doing RIGHT NOW in lebanon and constantly in palestine.

I also believe that what is written in a two thousand year old religious book does NOT give anybody any valid claim to land, and that israel at this point is a planted western colony in a place where people have been living for thousands of years.

Do you believe that israel has a holy mandate to be there and carry its actions ?

> Should I believe the UN

When it relates to anything involving Israel the UN clearly has zero credibility[0].

> I certainly believe they are the source of aggression, violence, pain and misery in the region.

Then you clearly have no understanding of the history of the region, there are plenty of conflicts essentially unrelated to Israel in the region that have had far higher casualties.

> They are constantly invading and occupying the homeland of other people, as they are doing RIGHT NOW in lebanon and constantly in palestine.

Jews have continuously lived in that region for thousands of years. Both sides can make arguably legitimate claims to the region being their homeland. Lebanon is essentially a failed state at this point as their government is unable to prevent Iranian militias from attacking Israel, aside from a small number of extremists in Israel there is little desire for any permanent Israeli settlement in Lebanon.

> I also believe that what is written in a two thousand year old religious book does NOT give anybody any valid claim to land, and that israel at this point is a planted western colony in a place where people have been living for thousands of years.

Most Israelis were born in and have lived essentially their entire lives in Israel at this point, no need to involve religious books to see that Israel is their homeland at this point.

> Do you believe that israel has a holy mandate to be there and carry its actions ?

I don't believe in any holy mandates or supernatural claims at all.

[0] https://unwatch.org/2025-unga-resolutions-on-israel-vs-rest-...

> When it relates to anything involving Israel the UN clearly has zero credibility[0].

Or that bias could be entirely explained by the heinous actions of israel.

> Then you clearly have no understanding of the history of the region, there are plenty of conflicts essentially unrelated to Israel in the region that have had far higher casualties.

This is not even an argument. Because conflicts exist, a colony has the right to exist and create more ?

> Lebanon is essentially a failed state at this point as their government is unable to prevent Iranian militias from attacking Israel

Need I remind you that Hezbollah was founded DIRECTLY as a reaction to the 1982 israeli invasion of Lebanon ? No israel = no Hezbollah

> Most Israelis were born in and have lived essentially their entire lives in Israel at this point

So have all the Palestinians that are displaced and cannot even visit the places they were born, because they are occupied by israel. How can you seriously support all this ? Should israel occupy the entire west bank and gaza and keep starving and impoverishing the Palestinians ?

Did israel ever try to live peacefully with its neighbours ? No, it viewed them as the de facto enemy, conducting "preventative" strikes (i.e. attacking them). Israel does not want peace. It is de facto the source of pain and misery for people, including the israelis.

> Or that bias could be entirely explained by the heinous actions of israel.

There are far worse conflicts in the world than the Israel Palestine conflict...so no that would not explain it.

> Because conflicts exist, a colony has the right to exist and create more ?

There are many countries around the world that have colonial origins in some form, should the US not have a right to exist today since in the past it was a colony?

> Need I remind you that Hezbollah was founded DIRECTLY as a reaction to the 1982 israeli invasion of Lebanon ? No israel = no Hezbollah

You seem to forget that the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982 was a reaction to PLO terrorist attacks, if the PLO or any other groups weren't attacking from Lebanon then there wouldn't have been an invasion of Lebanon.

> So have all the Palestinians that are displaced and cannot even visit the places they were born, because they are occupied by israel.

How many Palestinians were born in Israel proper and don't have Israeli citizenship? I don't think it would be many at this point.

> Should israel occupy the entire west bank and gaza and keep starving and impoverishing the Palestinians ?

Clearly unilateral disengagement is not the solution, Israel tried that in 2005 in Gaza and it failed with catastrophic results for both Palestinians and Israelis. What's needed is a peace agreement, but for various reasons Palestinian leadership has not been willing to attempt to negotiate one in good faith.

> Did israel ever try to live peacefully with its neighbours ?

Yes, in fact Israel does have peace agreements with neighboring countries like Egypt and Jordan.

> Israel does not want peace.

Israel clearly does want peace and has in fact come to peace agreements with former enemy states. Israel gave the Sinai back to Egypt in exchange for a peace agreement which has held to this day.

At this point I do not know whether you're trolling, or if you're paid by unit 8200. Because nobody can seriously make this leaps in their arguments to legitimise a genocide, and to defend a country that is spreading pain and misery, including to the rest of the west with the economic ramifications of the most recent war.

In any case, I will disengage.

> At this point I do not know whether you're trolling, or if you're paid by unit 8200.

Or maybe, some of us aren't blindly following the propaganda pushed by terrorist organizations like Hamas and the Islamic Regime in Iran like you seem to be.

> Because nobody can seriously make this leaps in their arguments to legitimise a genocide, and to defend a country that is spreading pain and misery, including to the rest of the west with the economic ramifications of the most recent war.

You're making all sorts of wild claims like there being a genocide, a claim that clearly is not backed up by the actual facts, despite what some highly biased organizations may be claiming. The country instigating most of the conflicts in the region is Iran, not Israel. The country deliberately firing drones and missiles at civilian targets against virtually every country in the entire region is Iran.

Shalom

why US wouldn't block those tankers? Is there 5-dimensional chess somewhere here that i don't see? One can also wonder what money and through which banks Iran is getting for that oil - i'd find it hard to believe that Iran would accept Chinese currency and store it in Chinese banks.

The u.s. removed sanctions on Iranian oil so that Iran can buy more weapons from china to attack the u.s. it makes no sense but that's what's going on.

damn the whole operation is all-or-nothing... US just shouldn't have started this if it couldn't finish off the regime cleanly

this is going to become a worldwide economic disaster:

iran learnt it can 1. bully nearby gulf-nations 2. block hormuz

without much retaliation, and US can't do much due to internal politics (well a lot of people don't like Trump...)

so what cards do each nations have left?

can US "talk" with / use threats against iran and "make it a good guy"?

just talking threats can't force current regime to 'become good' -- bombing's not scary anymore

even economic gifts won't work: economically, iran is not vietnam: it has huge oil reserves, and it can hold hormuz hostage -- so time and effort can't make current regime 'a friend of US'

so... diplomatic chance is LONG GONE...

even if biden or obama becomes the president, they can't solve this: the 'benefit of doubt' is gone

so... unfortunately... the only card left for US and its allies... is ground troops... or some alternative to hormuz...

remember Afghanistan? There's no "finish the regime quickly". These are religious fanatics. See Taliban.

This is not religious fanaticism, it’s just a hated state apparatus trying to survive. If I was in the Iranian government making decisions I would squeeze the strait of Hormuz until Trump cries uncle because that’s the best way to survive.

A bad deal will just give a short break before Israel and US strike a third time.

> it’s just a hated state apparatus trying to survive.

well unfortunately its survival would mean tighter control of iranian populace: it now has an excuse to do so ("are you an american spy? why do you disobey higher command?")

iran will become more like north korea more than before...

as for the iranian people? well those guys could have been driving porsche like qataris people...

They could've been driving Porsches, except for the D'Arcy Concession which only left Iran with 16% of the profit from oil business in their country for a few decades... followed by Britain using their military might when Iran decided that a few decades of that was enough... followed by the US supporting regime overthrows after that... and so on and so on...

Iran is the way it is because the West has been ruthlessly exploiting their resources, undermining their government, and attacking them militarily for the last 100 years.

well I didn't expect this to be easy

but at least I expected US to be more prepared than this

> can US "talk" with / use threats against iran and "make it a good guy"?

Problem is Iran leadership especially would need to retarded to trust any good guy promisses from USA.

I mean, USA breaks promisses to literally anyone, but it specifically bombed Iran already twice during negotiations. And its history involves usa turning hostile each time relationships seems to get better.

How can you play good guy with history like that? And with present of attacking literal own allies?

yeah that's why I said the whole operation is "all or nothing"

> US can't do much due to internal politics (well a lot of people don't like Trump...)

I don't know why you're throwing this out casually, like the difficulty is merely due to political dissent? People "don't like" Trump precisely because all of his policies are exactly like this idiotic attack on Iran - poorly thought out, and inevitably end up doing the exact opposite as what he claims they will do. Trump's whole modus operandi has always been aggressive escalation against other parties, then making negative-sum "deals" to extract wealth. This half-works in business but absolutely fails in international relations (why all of our traditional allies are sitting this one out, at best).

You keep attributing these actions to the "US", but the truth of the matter is that the competent people at the top who was coming up with options like "here is a plan but it requires hundreds of thousands of US troops for years" would have been sidelined and replaced with a Party loyalist sycophant who said it would be easy. For further reading, see this HN thread on the Military Failures of Fascism https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47523207

well if the current president was Biden, people wouldn't complain even if the plan was bringing 100,000 ground troops.

Of course whether people like/trust the current president or not matters on the range of military power he can project on foreign land

dang if it was obama, it could have been 500,000 and almost no one would even fuss

You're saying that you personally wouldn't complain if it were Biden sending 100,000 troops, or Obama sending 500,000 troops?

I certainly would.

But the fact that the US doom industry has been beating the drum at Iran for years, while the US military intelligence community has still held back on actually attacking speaks volumes about what a poor idea this was.

It is more important to the US administration that more oil be on the world market to keep prices in check than it is to protect US troops. Makes perfect sense (completely immoral but easy to understand).

It makes sense. Israel is using the US to provoke Iran into attacking the US, so that the US can attack Iran in response, claiming that they are defending themselves.

Blocking them would further increase the global oil price which is probably contrary to the administration's wishes.

Because the average voter cannot see past the price at the pump. People are remarkably uninformed about how the world works.

that brings the question - given the amount of media and propaganda, is it a failure or a result of that media and propaganda.

What they have to see in this case in your opinion?

The price at the pump affects not only a voter's commuter car, but also every truck that delivers goods across the US. This may have a much larger knock-on effect.

OTOH the US is the largest oil producer in the world [1]. Theoretically the US could keep domestic prices in check, but that would require rather drastic administrative pressure, likely only legal at wartime.

[1]: https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=61545

It'd also require completely different refineries. Most U.S. oil is Sweet light vs the Heavy stuff we import and refine from overseas.

It's not only that. Oil prices also greatly increase the price of logistics, mining, metallurgy and fertilisers.

Plastic packaging in food is about to shoot up.

The food in plastic packages is about to shoot up

As Trump said, "we're not desperate for a deal, they're the ones who are desperate". Meaning, Trump realizes he sent his military, lead by the genius Hegseth, into a mess, and he is now desperate to get out, since Iran has the power to inflict more pain on the world and have him be the one to be blamed...

Saw a funny remark about 9d chess and with what's happening nowadays, I have the feeling that I'm not even smart enough to understand a game of coin flip.

Why wouldn't Iran accept Yuan? Without doing anything special, China is becoming the most reliable trade partner in the world.

Some oil deals between Russia and China already run on yuan (RMB). I suppose the yuans are promptly reinvested into Chinese goods, often the dual-use kind.

The US dollar is the standard currency for international trade, but the US government of course has great influence over its use. For example, they sanction anyone who does business with Iran.

This tactic, used against Russia, Iran, and others, has turned them to seeking other, safer currencies. The Euro is risky; EU members are American allies, generally speaking, and also may act against Iran, etc. for their own reasons. The most widely used currency and most stable economy (an unstable economy causes and unstable currency) is the Chinese yuan or renminbi.

That sounds like more reasons to use it?

I think I misread the GGP comment. Why not use the Chinese yuan? It's not as liquid or as stable as the US dollar.

If you sell something for $10 billion US dollars then you can use that money to buy almost anything in the world. If you sell it for equivalent yuan, your options are much more limited. For some things you might need, it could be similar to showing up to a shopping mall in Chicago with yuan - you effectively have no money (without finding a way to convert them to dollars, which brings you back to the original problem).

Also, while China is a major economic power, they are not considered as stable as the US government (though the gap is closing quickly). Your $10 billion in yuan today might be worth $9 billion tomorrow.

Went through the rabbit hole for this and found that China offers to convert countries' debt in USD to CNY with a very low interest. [1]

Just by doing this, Kenya saved 215 millions USD... on a Chinese USD loan. [2]

1: https://www.chathamhouse.org/2026/01/chinas-12-trillion-trad...

2 : https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-10-07/kenya-sna...

Very interesting. Of course, that puts them more under China's influence.

They get Chinese currency and trade it to Afghanistan/Pakistan/Turkmenistan (and probably India and China) to buy food and weapons.

My guess is that both those tankers and the oil they carry belong to owners other than Iran at that point. If the US seizes such a tanker, it could be perceived as sn act of aggression by China, for example, if they are the ones who bought the oil.

Intercepting those tankers will make US extremely popular in Asia-Pacific. Who doesn't love famine?

The US wants too keep the price of oil high so they can get investment in the Venezuelan oil fields. But they don't want the global economy to collapse.

They also want Iran participating in globalism.

Doesn't matter what they want. It's already a shit show. China will clearly emerge as the sole winner out of this.

China is well positioned to always win.

The US is etching closer and closer at weakening it's neighbours, once they have been defeated China will be the next Iran.

Asia-Pacific region gets virtually all of it's oil, gas and fertilizer precursors from strait of Hormuz. Sure. You can block those ships and tankers if you're the US. Doesn't particularly hurt the Iranians, but sure as hell hurts everyone(except China, due to them having their coal-gas industry, strong fertilizer industry etc.) in Asia-Pacific, including Australia.

I would encourage anyone reading this thread to expand the greyed-out comments. There's honestly something really sinister going on here which goes way beyond opinion.

There's also some sort of branching strategy happening to cut off points which criticise the wanted fugitive Bibi Netanyahu. The genocidal former furniture salesman who will kill anyone and everyone to avoid his corruption charges.

Everyone person in the world is suffering right now and is financially worse off because of Bibi.

In the UK at least, the media is working overtime to blur the blame elsewhere.

There was a post about astroturfing a while ago.

One theory is that the talking points are seeded by a set of paid supporters on platforms like Twitter, Facebook and Reddit. These people live in low income countries and can use LLM + broad directional instructions to mass produce comments in support of the regime.

The talking points that are successful are then reinforced by genuine regime admirers, enter the canon and spread. There’s no verification mechanism for bad or wrong ideas, since we’re in a post truth society.

The goal is to uphold the regime. The system trying to be stable and defend itself from the fallout of its actions. The actions are actually guided by an ideology plus personal interests, so they can’t be optimal.

The Israeli military has a division to shape public opinion on social media.

https://zeteo.com/p/israel-documentary-social-media

https://studies.aljazeera.net/en/analyses/digital-occupation...

> https://studies.aljazeera.net/en/analyses/digital-occupation...

I'm not sure citing a Qatari propaganda site with a well documented history of employing members of terrorist organizations as "journalists" is helping make your point.

Let's the the documents you're speaking of (and not those fake IDF spreadsheets which list some of them as being Hamas members when they were 6 or 7 years old).

Also please justify all of this:

List of journalists killed in the Gaza war:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_journalists_killed_in_...

Bari Weiss's CBS said a journalist who was killed was someone they worked with or some stupid shit when they were clearly a colleague or possibly more. I don't remember enough to be more specific, but that type of minimalism is rampant.

Israel kills journalists and civilians. Oh shit, civilian:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rachel_Corrie

And here I thought aljazeera was a respectable journalistic outfit. They certainly seem to be doing better than most of the corporate US media by my estimate.

Perhaps you should back up your mud slinging?

> And here I thought aljazeera was a respectable journalistic outfit.

While they may do some legitimate journalism they are well known for highly biased articles especially when it comes to anything relating to the middle east.

> They certainly seem to be doing better than most of the corporate US media by my estimate.

In what way? News organizations in the US like CNN certainly have higher standards than aljazeera.

> Perhaps you should back up your mud slinging?

Journalists who did work for aljazeera even held hostages in Gaza[0].

[0] https://www.jpost.com/israel-hamas-war/article-805525

> Journalists who did work for aljazeera even held hostages in Gaza[0]. > [0] https://www.jpost.com/israel-hamas-war/article-805525

Holy shit, you're right! The country murdering thousands of captive civilians and spreading proven lies about the status of hospitals as terror bases reported it, so it must be true! I'll never trust Al Jazeera again, now that I know they take hostages.

That's just a really bad argument that falls flat on its face and discredits you.

> proven lies about the status of hospitals as terror bases

Hospitals being used by terrorists for military purposes in Gaza is well documented fact.[0][1]

[0] https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/02/us/politics/gaza-hospital...

[1] https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2026/02/15/gaza-hospi...

> I would encourage anyone reading this thread to expand the greyed-out comments. There's honestly something really sinister going on here which goes way beyond opinion.

There is widespread support in Israel for degrading the Islamic Regime, for rather obvious reasons[0]. I think the evidence tying Bibi's corruption trial to his decision to go to war with Iran is rather weak, especially since Bibi has clearly wanted to go to war against Iran with US support well before the corruption investigation even got started.

> There's also some sort of branching strategy happening to cut off points which criticise the wanted fugitive Bibi Netanyahu.

You seem to be referring here to the ICC investigation(since Bibi is quite obviously not a fugitive from the Israeli police). The ICC's jurisdiction is highly questionable among other issues.

> The genocidal former furniture salesman who will kill anyone and everyone to avoid his corruption charges.

The corruption charges are not brought by the ICC at all, they originate from an Israeli police investigation and have much more legitimacy than the rather dubious ICC investigation.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Destruction_of_Israel_in_Irani...

I know the difference between the ICC warrant for Bibi for genocide and the corruption charges he faces at home.

> Rather dubious ICC investigation

Listen to yourself for a moment.

Also perhaps take the time to pull up a list of those investigated by the ICC in the past. It's not what I'd describe as good company.

Exactly. We know that the ICC was basically designed to throw arrest warrants at people who the west does not like. (Mostly Asian, African or more generally brown people).

It's baffling how Netanyahu is, what, likeable somehow? USA, Germany and the UK spring to mind.

I can't imagine him being good company. And I'm really happy that at least one EU country will arrest his ugly ass (Spain) and that his airspace is getting evermore compromised for fear of being arrested. Which he will be, eventually.

> We know that the ICC was basically designed to throw arrest warrants at people who the west does not like.

The ICC is a "court of last resort" which is one of the reasons the ICC going after Netanyahu is going outside their jurisdiction, see principal of complementarity[0] which the ICC is rather blatantly violating. Western countries generally have functional legal systems and Israel has a long history of imprisoning their prime ministers.

> And I'm really happy that at least one EU country will arrest his ugly ass (Spain) and that his airspace is getting evermore compromised for fear of being arrested. Which he will be, eventually.

If Bibi ends up arrested it will be by the Israeli police and not by some international court going way outside its jurisdiction for what are clearly political reasons.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Criminal_Court#A...

So it's either checkmate or MAD. Crazy times indeed.

> So it's either checkmate or MAD.

Don't expect MAD to work the way it normally would when you're dealing with ideologies like Martyrdom/Jihad which the Islamic Regime leaders have.

Tired old Zionist talking points to divert from the realities of the "Greater Israel Project".

> Tired old Zionist talking points to divert from the realities of the "Greater Israel Project".

Claiming the "Greater Israel Project"(which has no well defined goals and tends to only be something fringe extremists support) is somehow relevant to the Iranian nuclear weapons program and their desire to eliminate Israel[0] makes no sense.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Destruction_of_Israel_in_Irani...

Trump wants to attack Iran and ends up helping them more than ever. And Russia can also sell more oil at a higher price now. Great job. He went in without a goal, plan or exist strategy, and it really looks like he'll end up strengthening Iran.

At least I hope that Russia's support for Iran and Ukraine's support for the Gulf states, ends up finally driving a wedge between Putin and Trump. But in every other respect, he's just strengthening authoritarian regimes.

We want to have a strong Iran, but with a friendly and peaceful leadership. We could easily take out Iran’s oil infrastructure, but it’s important for that to survive for the next generation of Iran. It seems crazy that Iran is still loading oil and selling it right now, but the goal is not to destroy Iran. A revolution is needed and hopefully it will come soon.

You left out what would happen after we so easily took out their oil infrastructure. Iran would in turn hit all the other oil infrastructure in the region that they could reach. It would be an unmitigated disaster for the global economy.

It's no different than suggesting that we could easily take out the major military installations of a nuclear power in a first strike. Sure, but what happens next?

> We want to have a strong Iran, but with a friendly and peaceful leadership.

It’s incredibly naive to believe this kind of obvious propaganda.

Yeah, but surely you can see that this is completely the wrong way to accomplish that. Attacking a country is more likely to unite people behind its leadership. The US has tried this kind of regime change-though-bombing before, and it never works. The only case where it sort-of worked was Iraq, and that was only after a decade of chaos, destablising the entire world, and the creation of ISIS.

Netanyahu will let the whole world burn in a trash fire before getting to the point where he will need to face his corruption charges. He's a narcissistic and genocidal former furniture salesman. Human life is extremely cheap for him. There are really not enough arrest warrants on his disgusting person.

A good time to be reminded - solar and wind doesn’t need to be exported out of Hormuz :-)

The real problem is that some of the most important fertilizers are synthesized basically from methane. And about 25% of natural gas is exported via the Hormuz strait. This is something solar energy currently cannot tackle.

You can do solar -> hydrolysis -> hydrogen -> ammonia-> fertilizer, rather than methane -> steam reforming -> hydrogen -> ammonia -> fertilizer.

So it's technically feasible. Not quite there in terms of cost and scale but if the alternative is a blockade then probably worth investing in.

Ironically some of the best locations for production are in the middle east.

You can run the numbers the cost isn't that bad to do it that way.

I think South Africa gets most of its diesel from the Fischer–Tropsch process. You could use electrolytic hydrogen as an input for that. About 40% of the energy in gasoline is from hydrogen burning.

It's not great but it would allow you to run current vehicles off about 40% solar energy.

Best part you can probably miniaturize entire process into panel itself and 5 panels per hectare would be enough...

I'd like to see a turnkey synfuels plant for home/business use. Making methane or (better?) hydrocarbons. "Just add solar panels."

Anyone got a WAG about how much it would cost.

Some university in the US midwest demoed a prototype of this several years ago using wind power. Sorry no link to hand.

If 25% of natural gas demand is replaced by renewables then we don’t have to depend on Hormuz for fertilisers.

I don't think it's feasible to do get that done this season.

It’s less important to get it fully perfectly done this season and more important to actually do it at a short-medium timescale. Why are we still so dependent on the Middle East and Russia?

Actually it can, but it needs to be scaled up 1000x at least:

https://www.topsoe.com/news/worlds-first-dynamic-green-ammon...

Main innovation in this plant is that the process is optimized to run off of intermittent sources like solar or wind.

well I guess its time to grow nitrogen-fixing plants like beans & peanuts...

Solar and wind are more economically efficient methods of nitrogen fixation.

Release the strategic wind and solar reserves!

Solar and wind doesn't get a single ounce of grain or rice in to the market. No, actually, let me correct that. Solar and wind gets rice and grain to the markets, but only enough for roughly one billion people globally.

Solar and wind needs another source for base power since it is not constant 24/7 365 days and that other source is often natural gas. Nuclear on the other hand works 24/7 all year.

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