Comments on: A Little Good News On Dean

By: Bryan

Bryan — Mon, 20 Aug 2007 05:04:40 +0000

Anyone who doesn’t understand that the only reason anyone in the West cares about the Persian Gulf nations is oil, needs a brain transplant.

When a reasonable alternative to oil is discovered, the Southwest Asia group in the State Department will disappear, the Gulf of Mexico will be too dangerous to drill in, and it will cost too much to look for oil in Alaska.

The oil companies have been getting their way since the oil embargo and they need a good dose of windfall profits tax to pay for their wars.

By: Michael

Michael — Mon, 20 Aug 2007 01:56:37 +0000

All of which bolsters my long-held suspicion that the free market has little or nothing to do with the price of a gallon of gas. It’s all collusion. And of course the bureaucrats inside the Beltway whose job it is to investigate things like that and punish those who behave in that way are so deeply in the pocket of Big Oil that they’ll never have to worry.

Oh, well. All the more reason to be extra zealous in helping the researchers I work with who are hunting for alternative fuel sources to find more money to carry out their research.

By: Bryan

Bryan — Mon, 20 Aug 2007 01:07:03 +0000

The first thing that oil companies eliminate when they merge is refineries. They don’t want any competition and the refinery maintenance takes place when the price falls.

They had the refineries and the storage farms but they have been reducing their number for years. They didn’t need approvals for new facilities, the facilities were already in existence.

They just don’t want to compete.

By: Michael

Michael — Sun, 19 Aug 2007 22:41:07 +0000

It’s all a bunch of lame excuses, in my estimation. If it isn’t the weather, it’s refinery capacity, or maintenance issues, or the need to switch from one formulation to another, yada, yada, yada. Gee, it seems to me that summer hits at roughly the same time every year: they really ought to have a good idea of when they need to switch from winter formulation to summer. And if you have to schedule maintenance, it makes sense to do so, when possible, at a time when the downtime at one refinery can be taken up by another that’s just coming back online. And if they were so bleepin’ concerned about capacity, why haven’t they tried to build more refineries or tank farms and such? It’s not like they’ve been hurting for money lately.

By: Bryan

Bryan — Sun, 19 Aug 2007 16:04:44 +0000

There are some rigs in the Bay of Campeche and they will be evacuated with the pipeline shut down, but the market jumps with any big weather event in the Gulf.

By: Michael

Michael — Sun, 19 Aug 2007 13:05:54 +0000

At least up here, gas prices are already on the rise, presumably due to projected problems with Gulf rigs from the hurricane. The price for a gallon of unleaded regular when I drove home from work Thursday night was $2.76 or thereabouts. When I drove over to the grocery store yesterday morning, it was $2.93.