By PNW Staff
September 18, 2026
A refinery outage here. A pipeline disruption there. Another geopolitical shock. Severe winter weather. A transportation bottleneck.
Individually, the system can usually absorb such events. The danger comes when several occur simultaneously.
The Domino Effect
This is why Americans should be watching more than the numbers displayed outside the neighborhood gas station.
The first domino is fuel.
Behind it are trucking, agriculture, shipping, manufacturing and home heating. Behind those come grocery prices, retail prices, factory costs and household budgets.
And then there is another possibility already visible overseas: labor unrest.
When truckers, fishermen or transportation workers conclude that fuel prices make operating economically impossible, the consequences can extend far beyond those industries. France has already seen fishermen blockade a fuel depot amid broader labor unrest, while strikes have affected operations at the country’s largest LNG terminal and parts of its energy sector.
Imagine even a relatively short disruption in American trucking combined with already elevated diesel prices. Grocery deliveries don’t wait indefinitely. Neither do fuel deliveries, manufacturing inputs or agricultural shipments.