Wisconsin farmers are paying record diesel prices at the pump and new freight add-ons to move the harvest. Local coverage of the latest spike points first to two Great Lakes refineries, not a simple blame-Trump-and-Iran story. Diesel has been volatile since April, machinery costs are up, and some haulers have nearly doubled rates with fuel surcharges, domestic plant trouble south of Chicago are unique to this region’s supply.
Exxon Mobil’s Joliet, Illinois, refinery, a 275,000-barrel-a-day plant producing about 11 million gallons of gasoline and diesel daily, lost power around 3:30 p.m. Sept. 13 when ComEd lines feeding the site went down. Safety flares tripped, and the plant shut down. Power was restored that evening, but the units did not restart. On September 17, Exxon told regulators floodwater had overwhelmed a pump. Crews deployed a containment boom. Industry monitors had hoped for a two-week heat-up, but the flood left the restart date open. Joliet accounts for about 6 percent of Midwest refining capacity and ships by pipeline into Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.
BP’s Whiting, Indiana, refinery had a separate technical hitch around Sept. 17 that reduced output. About 800 United Steelworkers Local 7-1 members have been locked out since March 19 after contract talks failed. BP said contractors and remaining staff have kept the plant running. The Journal Sentinel noted operations looked largely unaffected by the union fight despite the short outage. De Haan said diesel in Wisconsin was about $6.10 to $6.19 a gallon last week, with some Great Lakes stations approaching $7. Unlike gasoline, diesel does not get a seasonal winter-blend discount.
Democrats have spent months pinning farm diesel on President Donald Trump and the Iran war. Sen. Tammy Baldwin called it Trump’s “war of choice.” WisDems tied record pump prices to Rep. Tom Tiffany’s votes. Climate Power ran the same line against Tiffany and Rep. Derrick Van Orden. The newest farmer squeeze, the hauling fees and the Joliet blackout, is a Midwest hardware problem: a ComEd outage, a flooded pump, and a Whiting blip on a locked-out site. Global markets are tight. That does not make a 275,000-barrel plant going dark for an “undetermined” stretch someone else’s talking point. Harvest trucks still need fuel that used to leave Joliet.
