With election threatened, Sullivan discovers diesel ‘is just too damn high'

With diesel fuel hitting a record $6.66 a gallon in urban Alaska thanks to Trump’s war in Iran, Sen. Dan Sullivan is trying to salvage his reelection campaign by jumping on the Trump bandwagon to ban U.S. exports of diesel until the war ends.

Even now, with Trump saying he might “annihilate” Iran, Sullivan has nothing of substance to say about the war in Iran.

“Do I annihilate the Islamic Republic and do it quickly, never giving them a chance to kill and destroy people and countries again? Do I drive them into hell with no chance of survival and no hope of future greatness or generations?” Trump said at the UN Tuesday.

Trump is again threatening massive war crimes, but Sullivan won’t say a damn thing, though he says the price of diesel is “too damn high.”

In this Golden Age of Alaska energy dominance, the cost of diesel fuel has climbed by more than $2.50 a gallon.

Sullivan and other Republicans, unwilling to admit they bear much of the blame for allowing Trump to recklessly go to war with no oversight, are desperate for ways to cut fuel prices.

Regarding the Trump plan for an export ban on diesel fuel, the experts agree this would backfire over the longer term by prompting refineries to reduce diesel production. But Sullivan and the other GOP politicians are only thinking of the election, not what would follow.

“Domestic refineries would likely opt to process less crude since they will have lost a slew of overseas customers. In that scenario, they would make less gasoline and jet fuel as well, leading to higher prices,” the Wall Street Journal reported.

“Another complication is that some regions of the U.S., such as the Northeast, import diesel. If refiners were to limit shipments abroad, prices would increase globally, and the Northeast would be left paying even more,” the Journal said.

“S&P Global Energy estimates that U.S. refiners would need to reduce crude runs by nearly 2 million barrels a day—more than 10%—to eliminate the resulting diesel surplus. This would likely suppress refining margins to near zero, it said.”

The American Petroleum Institute said an export ban would not lower prices, but it would create chaos.

Most of the diesel fuel used in Western Alaska comes from refineries in Asia, so an export ban would lead to higher prices in rural Alaska.

Texas Sen. John Cornyn said the proposed ban is a gimmick, The Hill reported.

Sen. Lisa Murkowski opposed the ban early last week. “Murkowski sounded more receptive to the idea later in the week but expressed concern that shutting down oil exports might not move the needle,” the Hill reported.

Sullivan, who declared his support for Trump’s war the moment it began, has done nothing to stop the war, unlike Murkowski, who has voted numerous times to end the war.

Mary Peltola claims that by voting to extend the war in Iran 12 times Sullivan has boosted fuel prices. That is an oversimplification, but it gets at the truth that the high prices are the direct result of Trump’s gross errors and GOP complacency.

“A dozen times Dan Sullivan has voted to continue the war in Iran. A dozen times Dan Sullivan has voted to jack up our prices,” she says.

Sullivan has yet to call for suspending the federal gas tax, a move he opposed when Biden proposed it, but he wants to stop oil companies from selling diesel on the world market.

By the same logic he should propose a ban on exporting gasoline.

“American fuel should stay home with Americans. The cost of diesel is just too damn high. I’m calling for a temporary pause of American diesel exports so that we can rebuild our reserves ahead of winter, and put American and Alaskan families first,” Sullivan’s campaign claimed in a press release.

Sullivan went on in his press release to have spokesman Nate Adams lie about why gas prices spiked in 2022.

If Sullivan is going to lie, he should have the courage to put his name on it, not a campaign employee.

It is not true that there was a “Democrat regime whose relentless onslaught on Alaskan energy sent fuel prices soaring in 2022, the same year Congresswoman Peltola went to Washington.”

The regime that sent oil prices soaring in 2022 was Vladimir Putin’s in Moscow.

Putin is the dictator that Trump curries favor with, an alliance that Sullivan dares not mention in public.

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