https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eschatology
xkcd://2345
"When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time." ~ Maya Angelou
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/odd-lots/id1056200096?...
For context, about 30% of the fertilizer supply chain relies on the Strait of Hormuz, mainly due to natural gas. Additionally, ~15% of crudel oil exports are effectively blocked. All of this was known beforehand. It was also known that breaking the blockade was essentially impossible. Iran's entire military is designed for this scenario: cheap drones and missiles in huge numbers from cheap launchers and in hardened facilities. Commercial vessels can be attacked with drone boats, basically. The navigable part of the Strait at its narrowest point is less than 8 miles wide.
And we're paying about $1 billion per day for all this. But that's OK because somebody is getting rich from contracts to replenish every munition we're using.
Invading Iran is geographically impossible.
Every single thing I mentioned here has been known for years. Yet here we are. IN a just world, people would hang for all the crimes we've consistently and repeatedly committed against Iran since at least 1953.
look at the chart in the article, then click 5Y on the bottom of the chart.
Click the + sign between the calendar and wrench icon
Type in "US Food inflation". It will overlay the "urea" price with the "US food inflation".
Yes, urea seems to be a leading indicator. It is nothing like in 2022, yet.
And that was specifically due to the (ongoing) Russian Invasion of Ukraine. After the 2022 spike, most large countries began building alternative supply chains to reduce impacts from these kinds of hits.
For example, the US and Europe largely doesn't use urea unlike Brazil, India, and China.
This is also why Asian countries have been investing heavily in Hydrogen energy despite HN's hate boner to the technology.
Edit: can't reply
> Is it really hydrogen energy if your plan for the hydrogen gas is turning it into ammonia? Would give you another use for it, I suppose
The whole point of building a hydrogen energy market is becuase hydrogen electrolyzers are dual use, and the methodology to leverage and produce "green" ammonia is similar to "green" hydrogen.
A non-LNG method to mass produce ammonia has always been called out in most countries Hydrogen energy roadmaps such as Japan [0], China [1], and India [2].
[0] - https://grjapan.com/sites/default/files/content/articles/fil...
[1] - https://rmi.org/wp-content/uploads/dlm_uploads/2022/09/china...
[2] - https://www.adb.org/sites/default/files/publication/1033081/...
Would give you another use for it, I suppose.
I can't see past 5Y without paying, so I don't know if the past three years was an abnormal low, or if that's the regular cost.
I guess the recent move in urea likely isn’t coming from energy costs, something fertilizer-specific, exports, shipping, or supply?
Or it's just noise \_(ツ)_/
One of India's SOEs recently paused Urea production at some plants due to NatGas issues from the ongoing conflict [0].
Additonally, India began reducing purchasing of Russian LNG in late 2025.
India also launched a tender to purchase urea on the global market in February [1].
This led to a double whammy for urea in the short term given how Indian agriculture is heavily Urea dependent (around 70-80% of all fertilizers used in India are Urea).
But the same SOE recently announced it's restarted operations earlier today [2] and India has restarted spot purchases of what appears to be Russian LNG [3][4] that was originally destined for Europe (especially Hungary and Slovakia).
Edit: can't reply
I'm not a god damn LLM and I do not use AI to write my comments. If you can't engage with an argument, then fuck off.
[0] - https://www.tribuneindia.com/news/punjab/gas-shortage-halts-...
[1] - https://www.rfdtv.com/india-urea-tender-tightens-global-fert...
[2] - https://www.tribuneindia.com/news/bathinda/nfl-bathinda-plan...
[3] - https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/india-securing-addit...
Worried the administration will use it as an excuse to rollback NOx emissions regulations that mandated DEF usage in diesel engines. They are already not enforcing "deletes" of the emissions systems which is a federal crime.
Any or all can be "deleted" and is a crime to do so. All 3 systems add complexity and potentially reduce performance which is why those who don't care about emissions like to get rid of them.
Before DEF NOx regulations steadily went up engine manufacturers relied on increasing amounts of EGR to control NOx until it was not tenable, once DEF systems where implemented they could back off EGR increasing performance but not as much as ripping it all out and tuning for no care of emissions.
There are EGR free engines that rely entirely on DEF to control NOx but they are not for on-road use in the US thus far.
Most regulations target emissions at point of sale but don't give a toss if such systems are practical or maintainable. It's sometimes better for the environment to have more emissions but not so much waste from having to buy a new thing more frequently.
You can find instructions on how to make DEF simulators using raspi's to fool the ECU into think the DEF system is working, people who do care about emissions will still carry these for emergency so they continue on their trip and get to a shop later. The derate was over zealous for sure and was a bad policy.
Also DPF is a performance issue since it blocks the exhaust to some degree, same with catalytic converter with def nozzle so no its not just EGR at all. DPF also consumes more fuel for regens.
2027 diesel regulations was to mandate even more NOx control but also specified manufacturers were required to have 100,000 mile 10 year warranty on emissions systems, its 5 year, 50k now. I believe thats dead in the water now.
A diesel engine with a deleted SCR system puts out 40 times the NOx of a working one. Thats 40 trucks going down the road to 1 equivalent. NOx causes asthma and acid rain, its not for the environment as much as for you directly.
Emissions reduction efforts would be better spent ensuring repairability. The sunk cost emissions of landfills filled with junk created by planned obsolescence is much worse.
Diesel pick ups are not practical vehicles. Let's be honest, it's a hobby. It's always going to be niche and cutting down the last 10% is always the hardest. General aviation still uses lead.
All the stuff that makes up emissions gear is highly recyclable and in fact some of it very desirable which is why people are getting catalytic converters stolen. So I do not worry about it filling up a land fill.
I also don't worry about EV batteries filling landfills because again they are very high grade ore for new batteries, once we have enough in circulation we no longer need to mine much lithium or rare earth.
I agree it should be reliable and repairable and forcing the manufacturers to have very long warranties on it seems like a good way to do that, having followed the various generations of DEF systems for the last decade the manufacturers have been making big strides because it costs them otherwise and has.
I also think airplanes using lead is stupid, but that is a fraction of even private diesel pickup usage let alone commercial trucking. Diesel pickups are at least 10% of all pickup sales now days.
burnt-resistor•2h ago
About half of all fertilizer is artificially created using fossil fuels.
There is no undoing of this price shock because the planting and growing season has already arrived in the Northern Hemisphere.
Expect grains to become more expensive and downstream food products like milk and cheese to increase a lot.
carbocation•1h ago
gravypod•1h ago
toomuchtodo•1h ago
https://www.reuters.com/markets/tracking-lng-flows-key-globa...
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/u-natural-gas-prices-rise-130...
gravypod•1h ago
alephnerd•1h ago
This will be a shock, but mostly in Asia where LNG is dependent on Gulf sourcing, but most of the larger Asian countries began investing in building alternative supply chains and the financial buffer to ride out these kinds of shocks.
This isn't the first system shock to have happened in the past 5 years - the Russian Invasion of Ukraine in 2022 led to a similar shock, and larger countries began building redundancies as a result.
You will see this in the graph linked above as well - urea prices are well below their 2022-23 peaks.
Additionally, the North American farming uses significantly less urea than other countries [1]
[0] - https://www.eia.gov/dnav/ng/ng_move_impc_s1_a.htm
[1] - https://ammoniaenergy.org/articles/decarbonizing-urea-produc...
belorn•1h ago
adrianN•1h ago
alephnerd•1h ago
It's mostly China and India that are impacted, but both have the Russian option.
This isn't our first rodeo with elevated urea and NatGas prices - the same thing happened during the Russian Invasion of Ukraine in 2022 (and is reflected in the same dataset OP linked).
This is also why Asian countries have been investing heavily in Hydrogen energy despite HN's hate boner to the technology.