Oil Company Profits Well Spent

Status
Not open for further replies.
Joined
May 25, 2005
Messages
1,137
Location
Florida
Detroit News

The good news
grin.gif
:

quote:

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) -- Oil companies and other investors are spending a collective $100 billion on new oil refineries that could alleviate the current bottleneck in refining capacity - and eventually translate into a small cut in the price of gasoline, a top project financier said here Sunday.


The bad news
mad.gif
:

quote:

But most new refineries are being built outside the United States - mainly due to opposition to refinery construction by local communities near proposed sites. That means Americans may pay as much as $1 per barrel more to import a larger proportion of their fuel as finished gasoline and diesel fuel in coming years, Rathvon said.


 
How stupid can people be? Oh, we don't want a refinery blocking our view so we'd rather pay BILLIONS of dollars more per month.

From what I've read in the past - Canada and Colorado sites are being developed for the oil sands (canada) and shale rock (colorado). These two sites contain billions of barrels of oil - at a higher cost. So, at least we have something
tongue.gif
 
quote:

Originally posted by sxg6:
Would you want an oil refinery near your house Origin?

sxg6 ..are you a NIMBY? (not in my backyard)? So who do you choose to wipe up for you with landfills and incinerators ..or factories ..or refineries?

Who gets to provide you with the clean and pristine existance that you desire? Are you willing to make others pay for your vision of everyone's collective future?

They have to go somewhere. Is this another game of musical chairs ..where some want reserved seats when the music stops?
 
It doesn't make a lot of sense for oil producing nations to be exporting crude oil, when they could be exporting finished product, saving on shipping costs.

How many thousands of dollars worth of chemicals and finished products are derived from each $70 barrel of oil?

Insofar as the Bay area, a large amount of fuel demand obviously would be from the transoceanic shipping fleet. Not only would demand be strong from that use, but also, the bunker oil that ships typically burn most certainly would not come anywhere near even meeting California spec for diesel fuel without a ton of additional refining.
 
"But most new refineries are being built outside the United States - mainly due to opposition to refinery construction by local communities near proposed sites."

The second half of this statement is pure **. Local opposition does not keep refineries from being built (do you REALLY think that the
all-powerful oil lobby doesn't get what it wants?). They aren't built in the US because big oil wants to keep supply down so that big oil can use a phoney supply and demand argument as one of the reasons for its price fixing and price gouging. As a matter of fact, that's the reason that the oil companies for years have declined to build new refineries in the US and have closed some existing ones.
 
same thing happened with katrina, california had a dozen refineries sitting, doing nothing while everyone paid for lack of supply....probably due to clean air acts etc, but why would there be refineries to begin with?
 
jmacmaster,

I would buy your arguement if it actually worked that way.

However, one has to simply look at the OPEC production target cheating to see that a large group, operating in the open about their setting of production targets to achieve a suggested price actually worked.

I believe that OPEC members were assigned target levels of production to help control the price of crude oil.

However, it seems that many/most member of OPEC actually cheated, because ultimately, their goal was to make as much money as possible.

The same is true with big oil. These folks are trying to make as much money as possible, trying to get an advantage over their competitors.

I seriously doubt you could get these companies to organize a joint picnic, much less collusion on setting the price of crude or finished unleaded gasoline.

If it is profitable to make a gallon of gasoline, these guys are going to do it. If not, someone else will.

I suspect we will see new refineries if gasoline stays at or above $2.50+/gallon. We had years of gasoline at 1/2 this price. Little or no incentive to build new refineries, or retrofit old refineries to meet changing, and more stringent environmental regulations.

Now, with higher prices, perhaps we will see more domestic refineries. Either, existing, moth-balled refineries, put back into production, or new facilities constructed.

But personally, I doubt collusion.
 
I don't think that we have built a refinery since the 1970s.
We need more.
I guess this is better than nothing, even if not perfect.
 
The Chevron El Segundo refinery in California sits right next to some of the most expensive houses in the USA. Many of those people spent over a million dollars to live next to a refinery, and have an unrestricted ocean view. Would that refinery be built on the same site today, like it was in 1911?
 
quote:

Originally posted by Gary Allan:

quote:

Originally posted by sxg6:
Would you want an oil refinery near your house Origin?

sxg6 ..are you a NIMBY? (not in my backyard)? So who do you choose to wipe up for you with landfills and incinerators ..or factories ..or refineries?

Who gets to provide you with the clean and pristine existance that you desire? Are you willing to make others pay for your vision of everyone's collective future?

They have to go somewhere. Is this another game of musical chairs ..where some want reserved seats when the music stops?


Woah, Woah. All i'm simply saying is that i dont how some people can criticize others when it comes to certain matters. Such as criticizing the people who do not want an oil refinery near their neighborhood, i find it difficult to criticize them when chances are you probably wouldnt want one near your house either.
 
quote:

Originally posted by mechtech:
I don't think that we have built a refinery since the 1970s.

Plenty of refining capacity has been added since the 1970s. Existing units have been upgraded, de-bottlenecked, and advanced controls installed to improve availability and efficiency.

Its somewhat similar to the electric utilities around here. During the 1970s and 80s, the one around here had coal-fired boiler availability around 60% of the time, e.g. the power plant was only available slightly more than half the time (the rest being downtime for maintenance, forced outages, etc.

Today those same plants run at an availability rate in the 95%+ range. If the coal handling system is not functional, they can even maintain some output using natural gas or fuel oil cofiring (a cold boiler...is a boiler that takes a long time to restart). They have avoided building several new powerplants in this fashion.

So by this logic, there has been plenty of new refining capacity introduced in the United States since the 1970s. The lack of new 'greenfield' sites does not indicate that the industry is complacent in meeting demand. Consumers, for the past 20-30 years, have enjoyed unprecedented access to inexpensive refining capacity and refined fuels, refined in plants that were inexpensively upgraded, funded by investment capital that has been steadily declining in cost since the late 1970s.

Obviously, today, petrol motor fuel refining capacity is competing for investment capital with the upstream portion of the industry, as well as with other areas of higher necessity. There is more money to be made, for instance, in polystyrenics and plastics products (which are in a much more severe supply deficit worldwide), than there is money to be made refining commoditized motor petrol. Prices will continue to rise, and any future expansion of the industry in North America is not very likely to be 'greenfield' either, but rather further evolutionary development of existing megarefineries.
 
pitzel, one of the coal fired stations I work at had 40% availability in the late 70s early 80s.

Three years ago, we hit 98%.

Unfortunately management decided that we should then stop spending money.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top