US diesel squeeze

From the article:

The country is down to 25 days of diesel supply with stockpiles at their lowest level for this time of year in records going back to 1993. In the Northeast, where more people burn fuel for home heating than anywhere else in the country, inventories are a third of their typical levels heading into winter. National Economic Council Director Brian Deese called the levels “unacceptably low.” By late October, diesel prices had risen for more than two weeks to 50% above where they were a year ago.

[...]

Refiners in Texas and Louisiana can export diesel out of the Gulf Coast to buyers in Latin America and Europe for an immediate profit -- and they have been doing just that. The market backwardation means domestic deliveries that take longer are risky. This is a key reason that the country’s major fuel pipeline connecting Gulf Coast refiners and East Coast consumers was underused for months while East Coast seasonal diesel stockpiles languished at record lows -- the product can lose a lot of its value in the two to three weeks it takes to move through the pipeline.

[...]

Europe is exporting less fuel as it grapples with the sharp drop in oil and natural gas imports from Russia, and sanctions imposed by the US after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine have stopped shipments from there. At the same time, US seasonal demand for diesel is at the highest level since 2007. Farmers are burning the fuel to harvest crops, residents of the Northeast are filling up their heating oil tanks before prices rise even more and trucks moving goods on the country’s highways have geared up ahead of the holiday shopping season.

[...]

The market for diesel-type fuel in northwest Europe is also extremely tight, with stockpiles forecast to hit their lowest since at least 2011 this winter. Like in the US, the region’s diesel futures market is also extremely backwardated, with November delivery product at a more than $70 a ton ($9.40 a barrel) premium to December on Thursday.

Europe’s already strained market is also set to come under further pressure when European Union sanctions on seaborne deliveries from Russia -- the region’s single biggest external supplier -- begin in early February.

Sounds like "backwardization" is basically the market expecting cheaper diesel prices soon, and the risk is that supply problems happen and it doesn't turn out as expected.

The article lists a bunch of options for the US government to do something, but one they don't list is the government buying futures to keep current and future prices in line. The risk is losing money on inventory that drops in price, but shoring up supply seems like the sort of thing the government should be doing?