Spirit Airlines has cancelled all flights and announced an orderly wind-down of operations. Dave Davis, the U.S. carrier’s President and Chief Executive Officer, said in the company’s final public statement: “The sudden and sustained rise in fuel prices in recent weeks ultimately has left us with no alternative but to pursue an orderly wind-down of the Company.”
“Sustaining the business required hundreds of millions of additional dollars of liquidity that Spirit simply does not have and could not procure,” he concluded.
A rescue plan based on jet fuel at $2.24 per gallon for 2026 fell apart as US prices climbed roughly 70% above pre-war levels. About 17,000 staff lost their jobs as the airline scrapped 1.8 million bookings for May alone.
The International Energy Agency has described the mess as “the largest supply disruption in the history of the global oil market,” a scale outstripping the 1973 OAPEC oil embargo and the 1979 Iranian revolution.
Global oil stocks remain above emergency levels, but the total data hides bad shortages in certain spots. The pain is worst for refined products like jet fuel, chemicals, and gas (LPG), hitting people who can least afford the hike.
A Nigerian Refinery in Trouble
The crisis has pushed an African industrial project into the spotlight. The Dangote Petroleum Refinery in Lagos, the world’s largest single-train refinery, is now part of the UK’s emergency jet fuel plan.
The UK buys roughly 90% of its jet fuel from abroad, and switching from Gulf suppliers to Nigerian production involves tankers and port logistics that take weeks to sort out.
The refinery took on this role for Europe while dealing with its own worker disputes. Last September, the plant sacked about 800 engineers, blaming them for sabotage. PENGASSAN, the local oil union, argued the workers were fired to be replaced by cheaper foreign labour.
PENGASSAN directed its branches to stop crude and gas deliveries to the plant, accusing bosses of spreading lies, which caused local production to tank. The government stepped in, and the refinery recalled the engineers in late April.
Jet Fuel Running Dry
The IEA’s April Oil Market Report shows exactly where the problem lies. Chemical ingredients like LPG and naphtha make up most of the supply drop, down 1.8 million barrels a day.
While these have seen 8% and 9% yearly falls, transport fuels have dropped less, with jet fuel being the only product to actually grow in 2026.
But that total hides local disasters. IEA boss Fatih Birol warned that Europe had “maybe six weeks” of supply left, a window closing fast as summer demand jumps 40% above spring levels.
Asian chemical plants have cut their work by 7 to 8 million tonnes as ingredients ran out.
Chevron boss Mike Wirth put it simply: “I think as people look at the realities of very tight supplies, it’s not just a question of price. It’s actually – can we get the fuel?”
France’s Windfall and the Missing Framework
France’s struggle with the crisis has laid bare the gap between its green goals and the massive profits of its biggest energy firm.
TotalEnergies made $5.8 billion in the first quarter – a 51% jump – after US-Israeli strikes blocked the Strait of Hormuz and sent oil over $120 a barrel.
French Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu told TotalEnergies to share those profits, warning senators: “Exceptional results raise the question of an exceptional, proportionate redistribution[,] one option being through fiscal means. No doors are closed.” TotalEnergies told reporters: “That’s how we redistribute our profits.”
Antoine Bouhey from Reclaim Finance said the situation shows a dangerous dependence on oil, where high prices help shareholders while hurting regular buyers. France had already started to restrict short flights where trains work better.
Transport minister Clément Beaune told the radio that the country could “no longer tolerate the super-rich using private planes while the public is making cutbacks to deal with the energy crisis.” Now, the ban and the profits exist side by side.
Taxing the Windfall, Funding the Exit
The push to share the wealth has become a demand across Europe. A group of 31 charities and pressure groups, including Oxfam and WWF, asked the EU to tax extra oil profits to help people through the crisis. They noted that oil companies are on track to make a €24 billion windfall on road fuel alone this year.
Austria, Germany, Italy, Portugal, and Spain signed a letter warning that the price jump is breaking the market. The EU’s crisis plan, released in late April, said countries could tax these profits but didn’t set a shared rule.
This upset green groups who saw governments cutting diesel taxes instead of taxing the firms making money from the crisis.
“Once again, drivers’ pain is Big Oil’s gain,” says Antony Froggatt from T&E. “Instead of governments putting the burden on taxpayers, it’s time that oil companies pay up.”
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