Almost the complete story


It's not just private interests that are driving gas prices
This New York Times article came close.

American refiners are running roughly 5 percent below their normal levels at this time of the year.

“You have a system that is taxed to the limit,” said Adam Robinson, an energy research analyst at Lehman Brothers. “This is what happens when spare capacity is eroded.”

After Hurricanes Katrina and Rita disrupted the nation’s energy lifeline two years ago, oil companies delayed maintenance on many of their plants to make up for lost supplies and take advantage of the high prices. But, analysts say, they are now paying a price for deferring repairs.

As a whole, refining disruptions have been considerably higher than in previous years: they averaged 1.5 million barrels a day in the first quarter, compared with 700,000 to 900,000 barrels a day from 2001 to 2005. In the days after the hurricanes, refiners were forced to briefly halt as many as five million barrels of production.

The other issue that very few are talking about is the interference of government at all levels. No one wants to see new refineries in their backyard, and not that many want existing refineries expanded. Not to mention some of the other problems which the article DOES touch on.

Meanwhile, refiners have been scrambling to meet a raft of environmental regulations, phase out toxic additives, add ethanol to the fuel mix and introduce new ultralow sulfur standards for gasoline and diesel. Industry insiders attribute much of the fragility of refining operations to the difficulty of making these cleaner fuels.

Refiners spent $9 billion from 2002 to 2006 to make low sulfur diesel. But producing these cleaner fuels means processing crude oil more intensely through the refining process, at higher pressures and temperatures. This, in turn, leads to more chances for glitches or breakdowns, refiners say.

“It’s a marvel we can continue to run refineries the way we do these days given the many requirements and specification changes we have,” said Charles T. Drevna, executive vice president of the refining industry’s main trade group, the National Petrochemical and Refiners Association. “There comes a time when the piper has got to be paid.”

It's not just corporate greed that is driving this equation. Look at the regulatory power grabs too.

— NeoWayland

Posted: Sat - July 21, 2007 at 01:52 PM  Tag


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