On Sat, 13 Sep 2008 09:42:49 -0700 (PDT),
wrote:

On Sep 13, 12:29 pm, wrote:
On Sep 13, 10:55 am, Gene Kearns



wrote:
On Fri, 12 Sep 2008 22:02:42 -0700 (PDT),
penned the following well considered thoughts to the readers of
rec.boats:

I was supposed to go help with a sailboat race (cant sail cuz I messed
up my back) but cannot get any gas for the boat due to the shut down
refineries cuz a certain political faction won't allow more refineries
to be built thus putting 1/4 of our nations refining capacity at risk
in a naturall disaster like Ike. So, this IS about boating and my not
going boating due to idiocy of certain politicos.

Another incredibly specious post.

Oil companies, themselves, have limited the available supply of fuel.
They aren't stupid, they are just greedy.... they've purposefully
drastically reduced the available refining capacity (supply), thence
driven prices sky high, and reaped record profits for their
shareholders.

Tell me again, what is their motivation to increase supply and
decrease profits? They are corporations, they aren't there to powder
your out-of-gas buns, they are there to line the pockets of
shareholders.

--

Grady-White Gulfstream, out of Oak Island, NC.

Homepagehttp://pamandgene.idleplay.net/

Rec.boats at Lee Yeaton's Bayguidehttp://www.thebayguide.com/rec.boats

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Furthermore, if you look at oil company profits, they are about 10%
which is reasonable for most companies. Of course they make high
profits when 10% 0f $4.00'gallon is more than 10% of $3.00/gallon and
prices rise due to demand.

I happen to be most familiar with the oil business of Wyoming where
there is now no local refining capacity whereas there used to be via
the Midwest Refinery in Casper that refined most oil from central WY.
This old small refinery could not meet regs so it was eventually
bought by Amoco and shut down.

Gee, I wonder how THAT happened... Where did these regs come from? You
don't suppose the big oil companies wrote legislation that carefully
spelled out some rules the old small refineries could never meet?.

And then a big oil company bought the old refinery and shut it down?
Why would you buy a factory and shut it down? Sounds like a good way
to clear the field of competition, doesn't it?

Now, there is no good way to get
central WY oil to a refinery so it is locally refined into diesel for
use in coal mines.
My first job out of college was to develop a device to inspect the
roughly 20,000 miles of piping int eh Exxon Baytown refinery south of
Houston. Even this refinery is old enough that it has at least one
burst pipe a day and hardly any room to increase capacity. One cannot
shut down the existing refineries in order to increase their capacity
and one cannot build new ones so we are stuck with limited refining
capacity with 25% of it being where Ike hit.

Obviously your college education was not in business management or
marketing.

So, dont bitch at the oil companies, they'd love to make even more
money by increasing the amount of oil they produce and refine. This
nonsense about how they make enough that they dont need to make more
is ignorance of the most basic premises of economics.

Once again, they are making MORE MONEY by keeping supply down,
producing less product and creating high prices by having demand
exceed supply. They LOVE this setup, and who in their right mind would
do otherwise if they owned these companies? It lowers their overhead,
and at the same time increases the profit margins.