Things are not (quite) as fixed as the article suggests.

it is true that different crude oils naturally produce different mixtures of products when distilled. For instance heavy Chines crudes make lots of diesel, so China uses diesel-fuelled trucks as a major transport element.

However, use of (moderately expensive) catalysts allows heavier hydrocarbons to be cracked to lighter ones with a loss of energy. So we could produce extra gasoline instead of diesel, or extra butane instead of gasoline, or crack all the way down to Methane (natural gas).

Similarly, catlytic polymerisation can produce long-chain molecules like gasoline from short ones like Methane, but this also costs time, money, and energy.

The energy costs are not trivial and in todays market they limit the range of substitution that can be acheived.

If you were prepared to pay double today's energy cost, then the cracking can be done and the shortages avoided.

Personally, I have consistently argued that the infrastructure and lkegacy costs of gasoline (and diesel) engined transport mean that in the future we will manufacture synthetic gasoline, rather than change to a completely different transport infrastructure...