The tanks in Cushing, Oklahoma, are hitting bottom

mooreds 40 points 22 comments June 12, 2026
www.cnn.com · View on Hacker News

Discussion Highlights (4 comments)

sleepyguy

It's why Trump is pissing himself trying to get a deal. If the straight stays closed, everyone is fucked.

pkulak

Feels like every day for three months there's a piece about how tomorrow the price of gas is going $200/barrel. It never does though. Gas may just be a lot more elastic now than it was 50 years ago, or even 3 years ago. I have no idea, but I'll believe it when I see it.

gamblor956

TLDR: due to the conflict in the Middle East, the U.S. is exporting most of the oil that used to fill these tanks. If the conflict ends, or the U.S. stops exporting the oil, the tanks will fill up again, but in the case of the latter there are unpleasant political ramifications for Trump and his supporters so they'd rather see 100% inflation instead.

ticulatedspline

For anyone else out there that looked at the picture and their first thought was "are those tanks open to the rain?" thinking they were just open cylinders seems it's called a floating roof tank : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/External_floating_roof_tank And it prevents vapor loss or needing vapor overhead as the roof floats directly on the surface. Rain/snow water is pumped out off the top of the roof as needed.

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