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Page added on April 29, 2021

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Covid Boost for Global Car Sales to Spark a Surge in Oil Demand

It’s starting to feel as commonplace as handwashing: To protect against Covid, people across the globe are skipping trains and buses. Instead, they’re part of the great car comeback that’s sending vehicle sales soaring and fueling a demand surge for oil and metals.

 

 

Julie Murataj is a reluctant part of the shift. Two of her three kids are now getting dropped off at school instead of taking public transit. Then she drives her Volvo SUV to work, where she helps London schoolchildren cross the road by halting traffic with a bright, red and yellow stop sign that Brits call a “lollipop.” It’s a front-row seat to the world’s changing travel habits.

 

 

“There are many, many more cars,” Murataj said. “I’m seeing the roads busier now than they used to be pre-Covid.”

 

 

After being stuck in their homes for so long, people are itching to get out again. It’s a boon to newly reopening economies, with consumers ready to start spending more at gas stations, convenience stores, restaurants, hotels and attractions. Daimler AG, BMW AG and Toyota Motor Corp. all started the year with sales at records, and things are so hot that used car prices in the U.S. are soaring to all-time highs.

 

 

The jump in vehicle sales is a strong sign that this is more than just a passing fad. Like the ubiquitous face mask, the car renaissance could be the latest example of how Covid-19 makes a lasting impact on our lives. The change could usher in an era of heavier traffic jams and longer commutes. All the extra driving will send gasoline consumption soaring, but with that also comes a rise in pollution. The increase in gasoline use that the International Energy Agency projects for this year alone would add as much as 1.5 billion pounds of carbon emissions per day.

Traffic in Hong Kong is already twice as congested as in 2019. The streets of Tel-Aviv, Moscow and Bucharest are all busier now than they were before the pandemic, according to TomTom NV. In the U.S., driving miles on highways are starting to top 2019 levels, and in the U.K., fuel sales have nudged above pre-Covid levels and show little sign of slowing.

“People have a lot of cash in their pockets, and as lockdowns ease places will open up and allow those kind of leisure trips that may have been blocked,” said Richard Bronze, co-founder of London-based consultant Energy Aspects.

Gasoline is the big winner.

Profits from making the fuel are near seasonal five-year highs and are expected to stay strong as the Northern Hemisphere heads into summer driving season. U.S. refiner Valero Energy Corp. says gasoline sales are nearly at pre-pandemic levels, and the biggest bulls are predicting demand could hit a record. The U.S. Energy Information Administration expects summer fuel prices to be the highest since 2018 this year.

Vehicles bound for shipment at the Port of Southampton, U.K.

Photographer: Jason Alden/Bloomberg

The picture extends across the globe. BP Plc said this week that oil demand in China is back above pre-pandemic levels. In Europe, gauges of road congestion compiled by Bloomberg and covering 15 nations just posted their strongest reading in 10 weeks as the region emerges from another wave of the virus.

In Japan, an explosion for drivers-license applications signals a lasting shift to car travel. Applications processed in Shizuoka Prefecture, south of Tokyo, rose 8.7% in 2020, according to prefectural police. It’s the first significant rise in the past decade. The bulk of applications came from people in their 20s, a marked change from pre-Covid times when younger generations were increasingly choosing to forgo car ownership.

“We’re pretty bullish on gasoline going forward,” Gary Simmons, chief commercial officer at Valero, said on a call last week.

Other commodity markets are also getting a boost. Copper, aluminum, palladium and platinum, used in car parts, are seeing strong demand. And consumption is robust for corn and sugar, used to make ethanol, as well as soybean oil, used in biodiesel. With more crops going into fuels, it’s likely to exacerbate the food inflation that’s already crimping consumer wallets.

Meanwhile, largely empty rail and metro carriages are ferrying just a handful of commuters in some of the western world’s largest cities. That’s putting a hole in the finances of mass transit systems like New York’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority, German state railway Deutsche Bahn and Transport for London, which operates the U.K. capital’s tube network.

The move away from mass transit helps explain why the world’s carbon emissions are coming back fast after last year’s historic drop.

Earlier this month on London’s Marylebone Road, which runs alongside one of the U.K. capital’s royal parks, nitrogen-dioxide levels hit the highest since before the country’s first coronavirus lockdown, according to Imperial College London. The pollutant is mainly produced by diesel traffic, according to Simon Birkett, founder of not-for-profit Clean Air in London.

London crossing guard Murataj is an asthmatic and can easily tell you about the change.

“Through the first lockdown, when literally nobody was going anywhere, my breathing improved so much,” she said. “It was like being in the country or by the sea. I didn’t need to use my inhaler.”

But now?

“It’s probably worse now than it was” before Covid, Murataj said.

China, further along than most of the world in its coronavirus rebound, offers some insight on how long the car mania will last.

When lockdowns first started to ease last year, commuters in Beijing abandoned the city’s crowded metro and began commuting by car. But with the world’s second-largest economy staving off subsequent Covid waves and traffic jams in Beijing almost as bad as 2019, metro passenger volumes hit a post-Covid high this month.

The big difference, though, is the world outside of China has struggled to keep cases in check, especially in light of new virus variants. Parts of Europe have been in and out of lockdowns to deal with infection spikes, the Philippines’ case count breached 1 million this week and Japan has declared a new state of emergency in Tokyo, Osaka and two other prefectures.

Of course, the biggest virus threat is now in India, which is battling the world’s largest surge in Covid-19.

Vinkesh Gulati owns dealerships of both new and used cars in Faridabad, outside of Delhi. Demand is so strong that some of his customers are on a six-month waiting list, depending on what model they’re interested in. The congested city streets mean that in years past many buyers opted to travel by 2-wheeled scooter or motorcycle. But now, the open-aired vehicles are being shunned.

Customers “often tell me that they are buying cars to move around to overcome the boredom and frustration of staying at home all the time,” said Gulati, who’s also president of the Federation of Automobile Dealers Associations, which represents 90% of dealers in the country.

“They can leave on a weekend morning, drive for 200 miles and come back in the evening. It’s a good family outing.”

That desire for travel is expected to surge in the coming months, when the Northern Hemisphere basks in summer weather. Office workers have a store of vacation days to enjoy and kids will be out of school, so many families will be loading up their cars and hitting the road.

Some people are already making the move.

Saad Rahim is the Geneva-based chief economist at Trafigura Group, one of the world’s top independent commodity trading houses. He’s driving at least twice as much as he was before the pandemic began, mostly on family road trips around Switzerland.

Being in a car is like being in “your own bubble,” he said. “People are taking advantage of that.”

bloomberg



19 Comments on "Covid Boost for Global Car Sales to Spark a Surge in Oil Demand"

  1. Outcast_Searcher on Thu, 29th Apr 2021 10:02 am 

    But how long does this last? Over time, it appears that as a trend, the world will return toward normal as the vaccines continue to roll out.

    Even if we need boosters for years.

    Just as the global economy will improve as things trend toward normal overall, I would expect the move back toward public transport to occur.

    If people are going to go to movies and restaurants and public sporting events and gather with friends and family and on and on, the “I’m afraid of public transit” meme is going to fade.

    And I’m NOT saying tomorrow, but as a trend.

  2. AnotherIntoThisShitEarthControlByReptilians on Thu, 29th Apr 2021 10:32 am 

    I pretty sure that bad reptilians wants to know about my general health. The bad reptilians would be sad to know that now I have less pain then before. After all, bad reptilians like to see human in pain. They feed from it. They are going to be disappointed.

    So this is peak oil website. It make perfect sense to speak about prostate cancer here.

    I has all the symptoms: low urination flow, constant testicular pain, bladder control problems, pain in the lowers legs that resembling bones cancer, could have been the prostate pressing against some nerve, burning sensation during urination. These are the symptoms associated with either prostatis or prostate cancer.

    Was able to cure all of these using porn. The secret is in a long duration erection, not in ejaculation. With the right porn I can get a 30 min erection (this is not a joke or maybe it is) and upon ejaculation I am hard as a baseball bat. Make you fell alive and healthy.

    All my treated was based on this research paper : Effects of sexual arousal on lymphocyte subset circulation and cytokine production in man

    https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15316239/

    Being sexually arouse means having an erection.

    The porn industry is full of reptilians with a lot of actor having tattoos with satanist symbol. I would not be surprised to learn that they own the whole industry.

    I have to give it to them, they do good hardcore porn, face slapping, rough anal, nice bondage, nice submissive bitches, nice face spitting, well my kind of porn. A lot of it look CGI now. Really tough to find regular porn where the bitch does not over act and moans more then needed. Leave me some decent porn, don’t fuck it up by making fun of it too much. Porn is already fake by nature, so no need to turn it all into more of a joke.

    What I just written might be true or not. It is possible that I am just trolling the bad reptilians here.

  3. LetSeeHowGoodYouAre on Thu, 29th Apr 2021 11:00 am 

    This has nice info about bad reptilians

    https://www.humorousmathematics.com/post/x-factor-winner-reveals-worldwide-freemasonry-secretly-cloaks-it-s-true-religion-luciferianism

    The Freemasonic Empire. Jump at 10:10.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k1CNIEGxQTg

    They believe they can impose NWO agenda by destroying western civilization and rebuilding a new civilization type NWO.

    Lets see if they are as good as they say. Lets how they are going to build their NWO once the electrical grid, water distributions system is down and international trade has shut down because of peak oil ( no maritime container cargo shipping). I want to see that.

    Also I want to see how they will improve the morale of the white man, that they actively work at destroying using, systemic racism, white privileges BS, feminism, white guild, mass migration. Lets see how they are going to deal with low Whites birth rate and a demoralize Whites population world wide. Lets see how forcing the critical race theory on Whites people will work out for them.

  4. LetSeeHowGoodYouAre on Thu, 29th Apr 2021 11:29 am 

    The graphics in the link below illustrate really well the philosophy of bad reptilians and Freemason. It all about power, control, deception and lies. These are the tools they are using to control the human race.

    For them, it is about controlling the human trough a really complex and obscure power hierarchy like we see below.

    https://www.humorousmathematics.com/post/x-factor-winner-reveals-worldwide-freemasonry-secretly-cloaks-it-s-true-religion-luciferianism

    They are not doing the actual hard work, like build the infrastructure, building the highway system, the water distribution system, inventing new tech. Their strategy is either to force people to do it trough coercion or trough voluntary participation into the system that benefit them first.

    Because of the low Whites birth rate and constant demoralization of the White race using the critical race theory, Whites people have started to leave the system. It is mean now that they cannot count of the voluntary participation of Whites people to build a NWO civilization. They will have to use the brown shit diversity to do it. Good luck with stupid mother fuckers. Lets see how good it will work out for them when the White race passively start sabotaging everything and bail out of rebuild anything for you, bad reptilians and Freemason.

    Lets how it will work for you by not sharing your knowledge of this world with us, the human race

  5. LetSeeHowGoodYouAreOnceYouLoseControlOfTheMedia on Thu, 29th Apr 2021 12:03 pm 

    It is almost like some people are using the tools created by bad reptilian and Freemason against them. So basically some shadow people are using social media like YouTube, Facefuck, to destroy the bad reptilians and Freemason influence over the world.

    But, I am poor, what I am saying is probably wrong. Only Freemason know what the truth is. It is almost like some bad people are tying to destroy big corporation using the tool created by bad reptilian and Freemason.

    Not sure what Apple will think of this.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4X_IW3kqr3k

  6. LetSeeHowGoodYouAreOnceYouLoseControlOfTheMedia on Thu, 29th Apr 2021 12:19 pm 

    Why I look at this video on YouTube, I cannot tell if this is good or bad publicity for Ford. This look to me like some shadow people are making fun of Ford.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vHzolQVC_HQ

    Best part stars at 6:00

    But the Freemason are good at creating complex hierarchical power structure as a mean to solve problems. I am pretty sure they can solved this problem by creating some more shadow and obscure power hierarchy structure.

  7. ThisShitIsGettingMoreAndMoreConfusing on Thu, 29th Apr 2021 6:19 pm 

    This is not from me. I took this from the following video:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HNOe1w5Lwb0

    I guess the Statue of Liberty doesn’t look like the Roman god Sol Invictus either..

    https://pixfeeds.com/images/usa-travel/1280-465845804-statue-of-liberty-new-york.jpg

  8. makati1 on Thu, 29th Apr 2021 6:24 pm 

    Outcast, it is NEVER going back to pre 2019 “normal”. Never. They will make you have “papers” (Vaccine Passports) to even shit. Their goal is to:

    1. Kill off the 1st world economies and consumption.
    2. Kill off about six billion of us.
    3. Save the world for themselves and their slaves.

    They told us that in their plans. They are arrogant megalomaniacs with $$$$$$$. Insane.

  9. NoMoreReasonForMeToComment on Thu, 29th Apr 2021 6:29 pm 

    I have no reason for me be here if StarvingLion has been banned permanently. He was some kind of imagination muse and a form of entertainment.

  10. MaybeIShouldMove on Thu, 29th Apr 2021 6:32 pm 

    Outcastphilospher and starvinglion are gone. This site is going to be a really boring site without life. Maybe I should move on with my life.

    Plus life is short and we don’t live very old where I am coming from. I kind of don’t care about the future of the humanf race. I have no kids, so I have no personal intere in continuing thise

  11. ICanFinallyTurnThePageOnThisChapterOfMyLife on Fri, 30th Apr 2021 12:23 am 

    Adrenochrome is a hoax to push NWO agenda. Children are used to generate sympathy worldwide and unite the world under one government under the pretext to protect kids.

    I almost fall for this thing, thank god I refuse to meet anyone in real life.

    Everything is lies and deception with politicians. This is how they survive because they have no real life skill like Trump.

    https://www.justsecurity.org/72339/qanon-is-a-nazi-cult-rebranded/

  12. Biden's hairplug on Fri, 30th Apr 2021 2:21 am 

    “Biden spy chief: China would find change in US policy toward Taiwan ‘deeply destabilizing'”

    https://thehill.com/policy/defense/550950-us-spy-chief-china-would-find-change-in-us-policy-toward-taiwan-deeply

    The situation in 202x regarding East-Asia and Taiwan has remarkable geopolitical similarities with Europe 1939, if you map:

    1939 –> 202x

    Poland –> Taiwan
    America –> China
    Europeans –> Anglos

    What Avril Haines is suggesting is that both China and America could be suckered into war because of the behavior of Taiwan.

    Britain and France were set up for war by the US in 1939, by pressuring them in signing the war guarantee for Poland, meaning an unconditional pledge that Britain and France would declare war on Germany, if Germany would invade Poland. That encouraged Poland to begin ethnic cleansing of Germans from Versailles Poland, forcing Germany’s hand, forcing the hand of Britain and France, with the Americans the grinning thirds, who got what they wanted, namely war in Europe and the destruction of the European empires and Europe as a nice-to-have-colony, until today and the Eastern half for their Soviet buddies.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anglo-Polish_military_alliance

    Now a similar discussion is happening in the US. The big question for the US is: what to do with Taiwan? US interest is keeping the status quo. Chinese interest is breaking the status quo and annex Taiwan, which nobody disputes is ethnically/culturally Chinese, except perhaps for some forgotten Dutch halfwits, who still have fond memories of Dutch Formosa:

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

    America is now in a REAL dilemma: what would the US do if China finally does invade Taiwan?

    Before that happens, the US needs to make up its mind about attempting to deter China from making that move in the first place. In achieving that, the US has two options:

    – “explicit war guarantee” in the hope that deters the Chinese, like Britain and France did towards Poland, putting the fate of said countries into the hands of Poland (in hindsight a stupid idea).
    – “strategic ambiguity”, leave the Chinese guessing about what the US will do.

    The trouble with the first is that it could encourage Taiwan to declare independence, triggering a Chinese invasion and the US response. It would make the US army an extension of the Taiwanese army, just like Britain and France became an extension of Poland and involuntary enabler of Polish territorial objectives.

    De facto, the US IS in a state of strategic ambiguity, it merely helps Taiwan with armaments, but it has NO military bases in Taiwan.

    My guess is that if push comes to shove, the US will NOT engage in an all out war against China, if China decides to invade.

    On the other hand, doing nothing would be a total loss of face as a “Great Power”. It is very well possible that the US will react far way from mainland China, like halting oil supplies to China from Iran.

    But that would be half-baked measures only, triggering Eurasian counter measures, like Russia stepping up oil and gas deliveries to China. Or Europe, seeing US power waning, acting more independently of the US, making overtures towards Russia.

    The bottom line is that US power is on the way out. It will still be a great power, but no longer a hegemon. And if that becomes clear for all to see, expect repercussions for America internally. What if the US loses its century-old “calling” of conquering the entire world, ending in failure? White America will wake up in a country that is no longer theirs. The old “don’t rock the boat” attitude, could very well morph into some serious boat rocking, if white America realizes it is on the verge of becoming a minority in their former own lands and that secession is the only way out, the same logic that happened to the USSR, that fell apart in 15 pieces, once the Soviet adventure was over.

  13. Biden's hairplug on Fri, 30th Apr 2021 3:04 am 

    Regarding Taiwan, there is a very important issue that is underexposed: TSMC, the world’s largest microchips producer with 50% of the world market. For many reasons, the global industry is currently faced with a microchip shortage. If China invades, and the Taiwanese government doesn’t exercise a scourged earth policy (with which they can threaten now, but unlikely will follow up on such a threat), China all of a sudden gets this industry in its hands and acquire a mighty leverage over US industry/supply chains. Think Apple, think Intel.

    TSMC could be the prime motive for China to finally make its move. It is not about acquiring a few square miles, it is about acquiring technology and manufacturing capacity for chips, a blow against the US, reducing its sanctions options.

    There are finally some who are waking up to the importance of ASML, that is the technological enabler of TSMC:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CFsn1CUyXWs

    (The conclusion of the video is wrong btw: ASML = TSMC = equal. Anybody with money can buy ASML machines and “bake” microchips, just like anybody can buy ovens and bake bread. But not everybody can build ovens. Eindhoven is an electronics high-tech ecosystem, grown over more than a century, with the knowledge in heads, not a wallet)

    (I wouldn’t be surprised if I personally would return to ASML myself, after a serious certified, upgrade of my skills during the Covid year)

    My hometown of Eindhoven is undergoing a metamorphosis because of an enormous expansion of ASML, supported by, among others, the EU, that wants to achieve a much larger microchip market share for Europe.

    ASML busy building 1 km wide new assembly and office space:

    https://www.ed.nl/asml/asml-steekt-ruim-een-miljard-euro-in-vier-gebouwen-in-veldhoven~a49db7d7/

    Eindhoven, a former sleepy provincial town, until the secular-Jewish Philips family came to town, now preparing to build skyscrapers of up to 160 m high, for all these engineers from Europe and India:

    https://www.ad.nl/wonen/eindhoven-krijgt-spectaculaire-torens-bij-station-van-150-en-110-meter-hoog~a7637ab1/

    Eindhoven is rapidly becoming the IT-hardware Silicon Valley of the world:

    https://www.hightechcampus.com/news/htce/why-the-netherlands-is-the-new-silicon-valley-eindhoven

    “Why the Netherlands is the new Silicon Valley: Eindhoven”

    (Note: the HARDWARE Silicon Valley, not software, like the original valley)

    https://www.ed.nl/eindhoven/vergeet-silicon-valley-kom-naar-eindhoven~a391421b/

    “Forget Silicon Valley, come to Eindhoven”

    ASML trying to lure Americans to the Netherlands.

  14. Anonymouse on Fri, 30th Apr 2021 3:54 pm 

    Explain how oil-burner sales are a thing again, when the douchecanoes that fancy themselves the masters of the universe, are destroying the economy?
    In my province, under the pretext of the alleged covid1984 ‘pandemic’, regime officials have decreed you cannot travel, except for food, or to go to work, if covid1984 hasn’t either forced your business out of business, or you’ve simply been laid off.

    Simply put, the regime isnt allowing you to travel except in very limited ways, or to engage in much of what we call commerce or recreation.

    So, if you have no money, or not much, wtf do you need to finance a new oil burner for when is really no place you are allowed to go in it? Logic…..

  15. makati1 on Fri, 30th Apr 2021 4:03 pm 

    Anon, not all countries are in serious lockdown mode like the US, UK, Canada, etc.

  16. Dredd on Sat, 1st May 2021 7:26 am 

    So what.

    There’s history but there’s also herstory (Competence Isn’t All It’s Cracked Up To Be).

  17. Anonymouse on Sat, 1st May 2021 2:10 pm 

    Im sure that is the case mak. But here, in the North Amerikan Gulag, or my piece of it, as of yesterday? Road blocks on the mainland to stop travel the regime deems, ‘unsafe’. Not last week, or a month ago, but yesterday.
    More restrictions for the Forever virus are being implemented in the rest of the country on a near-daily basis. Not one elected official has said anything negative about the entire business. And the judiciary, is out of control as well, fining and penalizing people for even mildest resistance to covid1984 edits.

    I have no doubt *some* places are acting less draconian than others over the covid1984 operation, but, to get back to the articles main premise, I fail to see how the last year has created some of kind of reservoir of pent up demand for oil burners. Im sure the wealthy are buying new oil burners, or others whose current one is no longer viable, but, for the most part, there is not many places (most) covid regimes want, or will allow you, to actually go.

  18. makati1 on Sat, 1st May 2021 5:03 pm 

    Anon: If you can believe the articles, motor home sales are hitting new highs. There is a shortage of private jets, and container ships are backlogged with trips to the US. A lot of oil burning going on.

    I’m sure they will sell at least a few million new cars this year, in the US alone, to replace those that die. Even if you just drive to the food store, you need one in the US. If you live in the city, you might not, if you walk everywhere. Manila is as traffic jammed as before the flu bullshit. Oil use may be slow to recover, but it will.

  19. muzz lovah on Sat, 1st May 2021 5:40 pm 

    Supertards
    Pls love supremacist muzzies more

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