"Eisboch" wrote in message
news

"Gene Kearns" wrote in message
...

You need to do a bit of fact checking. The oil companies, themselves,
have decreased the number of refineries. Check and see how many there
were 30 years ago and see how many we have, now.

Bean counters know that you can enhance profits by *artificially
creating* a higher demand. Add that to a demand that *is* increasing
and you have $3/gal. gasoline.

And here's another one..... why is diesel fuel $3.50?



The problem with this issue is who do you believe.

This report blames the oil companies:
http://www.citizen.org/cmep/energy_e...s.cfm?ID=11829

This one blames excessive environmental regulations:
http://www.ncpa.org/pub/ba/ba603/


They do share one thing though. Both also blame the government. :-)

Eisboch



And some of the refineries closed as there was not enough oil in the area to
support the refinery and the cost and difficulty of bringing in more oil,
was both to costly or government permit disallowed. The Shell refinery in
"The Oil Patch" of SoCal is one of the ones prominently mentioned. It was
build to refine the oil from the local oil field. The field is at end of
life. The are no ports next to the field, so you build a pipeline to feed
an old, wore out refinery. Take the same amount of money to build the
pipeline and upgrade the refinery, and you have enough to build a new one
next to a transport hub. Plus a few years ago, the oil companies had a 2%
ROI, where were the tears from the users then? HK sells is writing for what
the market can bear, why should the oil companies be different. Same with
the excess fees charged by brokerage houses until Charles Schwab introduced
the discount brokerage and competition.