Physical economic factors are now clearly breaking the oil products world market in two, according to a new analysis by OilPrice.com Oct. 13. The state of refineries, and of oil tankers, between them are splitting the market into Western Hemisphere oil products and Eurasia-Africa oil products.

Oil tankers are being attacked, boarded, or stopped at will all over Eurasia—not only in the Strait of Hormuz but in the Black Sea and even the Indian Ocean. Because of oil tanker shipping costs—shipping companies’ rates are up by an estimated average of 40%, and shipping times are much slower. Crude oil in the Americas, including Canadian, and the heavy crude now again coming from Venezuela, is already as much as $30/barrel lower in price ($72/barrel at Gulf of Mexico ports, for example) than crude oil coming from Southwest Asia. And much of the production in the Americas is not reaching the Asian markets for which it was contracted, further destroying demand for it and therefore reducing the price of it, says OilPrice.com.

And because of the destruction of refinery capacity in Russia, Ukraine, and the Arabian Gulf “petro-states”— combined with simple lack of refinery building in Europe and the United States—distillates, especially diesel and aviation fuel, are at record high prices, while crude oil from Eurasian sources has again been rising sharply after a long “pause.”