Scary scenerio?

On the local (Houston) NPR broadcast this AM:

"in which the opening scenario is a terrorist crashing a 747 into the
sulfur cleaning towers up near Ras Tanura in northeastern Saudi Arabia.
Since you have to get sulfur out of the Saudi oil that would take
several million barrels, probably around five or six million barrels a
day, off line for a year or more. And Bud here is an old artilleryman.
He and I were talking the other day; I think he'll tell you you probably
don't need a big 747 to do that. A pretty skilled guy with some orders
could probably do it."

Try this link:
http://www.loe.org/index.htm

Then go to Oil & National security roundtable

WVK

 

The only thing worse is the terrorists that run American oil
companies. They haven't built a new gasoline refinery for more than
25 years, insuring that there is an ever thinner gap between gasoline
demand and supply, insuring the highest possible market price for
gasoline.

The problem (so I've heard) isin't that Saudi Arabia can't supply the
US with all the oil it needs. The problem is that the US lacks
sufficient gasoline refining capacity to keep up with demand.

The spectacular gas refinery explosion that happened recently (in
Texas?) I'm sure just makes matters worse - and I bet oil company
executives were over-joyed that even more refinery capacity was taken
out of service, thus insuring that gas prices would head even higher.

Same thing happened in California a few years ago. Power generating
stations were taken off line to reduce electricity supply so that they
could fetch higher prices.

 

Even worse are the environmental terrorists that tell the
rest of us what we should have or have not.
Lack of refineries is not due to oil companies.
Its because of taxes and the environmental idiots.

 

Presumably by "environmental terrorists" you mean normal people in countries
other than the US who are horrified by the amount of energy which that
country consumes as a proportion of the world's consumption, and by the
apparent inability of Americans to understand that global warming has
started and will continue to get much worse as we all continue to use
obscene amounts of energy.

 

...while conveniently ignoring the amount of *production* per unit of
energy consumed in the US. "Environmental terrorists" is overstating the
case and is unnecessarily inflammatory, but the man does have a good
point: Laws enacted for the putative benefit of the environment frequently
have unintended countereffects. Examples abound: A company can manufacture
its widget in Georgia (USA), which requires compliance with extensive and
expensive environmental and safety laws. Or, that same company can
manufacture its widget in Guangdong (China), with no such laws. The cost
of moving production to China, absorbing the higher defect rate,
transporting the raw materials and finished products to and from China,
and paying import duty, all lumped together, still pale in comparison to
the cost of complying with myriad poorly-coordinated, compliance-intensive
laws in the US.

That's not to say there should be no environmental or safety laws.
Obviously such laws are needed. The thing is, self-proclaimed
"environmentalists" are frequently guilty of exactly what they condemn:
They push for strict laws without regard to the implementation impact upon
the regulated party, then when the regulated party packs up and moves
elesewhere, the "environmentalists" crow about having gotten a polluter to
pack up and leave town. Thing is, the regulated party didn't just go to
that magical "away" place where many think car exhaust and household trash
disappear to. Instead, the regulated party went to China. The resource
consumption, local and global pollution caused by the manufacture and
international transport of those widgets is now MUCH higher, it's just out
of sight and out of mind. Net result: Negative.

If there's to be any _meaningful_ progress, smart and coordinated
solutions will have to be developed.

DS (Waiting to see if you'll fall into my trap and claim that Kyoto
constitutes a smart and coordinated solution)

 

No doubt true. But all this is somewhat off the track regarding the the
linked article. Are Mid East oil supplies as vulnerable to terrorists as
Woosley and MacFarlane argue?

WVK

 

No, of course not. Those people have no input into new refinery
construction. He was talking about domestic environmentalists who are easily
capable of stopping any new chemical processing site from being developed.
There hasn't been one since the70's.

If you couldn't figure that out from the context, you're a fool. If you just
deliberately acted stupid so you could change the subject to something
that's more important, then I agree with you.

 

How can those outside the U.S. impose those restrictions? No, you
idiot, he's talking about the enemy within.

who are horrified by the amount of energy which that

A professor who was a neighbor of mine has a rubber stamp made that says
EFBS that he stanps with red ink onto certain test discussion answers
when he grades them. The "EF" stands for "extra fine". Your post
should be so stamped.

Bill Putney
(To reply by e-mail, replace the last letter of the alphabet in my
adddress with the letter 'x')

 

MoPar Man wrote:

Uhh - you mean when California, in the name of "saving the world",
stupidly passed legislation blocking any increase in capacity, thus
cutting their own throats?

That's like handing a guy that you know to be a mugger a knife so he can
mug you, and then pointing at him for the rest of the world to feel
sorry for you at what he did to you.

The primary thought from the rest of the sane world is *not* what a
nasty guy the mugger was, but what an idiot you were to hand him the knife.

Bill Putney
(To reply by e-mail, replace the last letter of the alphabet in my
adddress with the letter 'x')

 

Next Bill, you are going to tell us that Enron was run by a bunch of honest
guys trying to find cheap energy for their grandma's.

 

Better yet, right wing idiots who don't understand or care that once the
water, atmosphere, and land are polluted, mankind cannot have any quality
of life.
It is true that government agencies sometimes overstep and don't use common
sense, but more often they wait until the damage is done by large
corporations and the citizens are left to clean up the mess and pay the
bill.

 

Anybody who believes that environmental laws are responsible for the lack
of new refineries probably has stock in oil companies or they are simply
morons who probably believed all the lies by Enron about the sudden lack of
generating capacity and other lies causing power shortages in California,
which were blamed on environmental laws blocking new power lines and etc.
It is utterly amazing at the number of complete idiots in the U.S. who
either smoked too much dope or believe that everyone should be equally
stupid and are doing their part to prove it.

 

Why yes! How did you know!? That is uncanny.

So you're going to pretend that California did not hand them the knife?
The people were victimized by their own stupidity and denial of reality.

Bill Putney
(To reply by e-mail, replace the last letter of the alphabet in my
adddress with the letter 'x')>

 

Anyone who believes that is not the case is in denial of reality.

So you don't see any connection between (1) Legal blocking of increased
capacity, (2) Subsequent lack of availability of higher capacity (duh!),
and (3) Subsequent increased pricing of the commodity that was
artificially put into a shortage situation by the legal blocking of
increased capacity (double duh!)?

In the same state that allows houses to be built in wooded areas,
prevents the residents from clearing surrounding scrub (might damage the
environment), and then sits in shock and amazement when fires sweep thru
the same neighborhoods destroying most of the houses in same (and doing
incalculable damage to same precious environment). I love liberal-think.

Look in the mirror, dude. The 60's were good to you.

Bill Putney
(To reply by e-mail, replace the last letter of the alphabet in my
adddress with the letter 'x')

 

Um, yes it is. Think about it. As a producer of a comodity (be it
electricity or gasoline), when you or your corporate peers add more
capacity to the production of said comodity, you are increasing the
gap between supply and demand. The larger that gap is, the lower will
be the price for that commodity on the open market. As long as demand
doesn't exceed 100% of supply (and cause social caos and inevitable
political/legislative involvement) then if the industry as a whole can
manage this balancing act then they can insure the best profitability.

What industry would bring an additional plant on-line that would lead
to the depreciation of the market value of the output of that plant
and all similar plants? Car production is an example where there is a
relatively open and competitive market (on the production side) and it
leads to situations like car makers having a glut of cars in inventory
from time to time. That situation simply does not exist in the energy
production sector because (probably) of a greater degree of collusion
in that industry, and the realization that there really is no
potential for foreign invovement (the Jap's can set up a car plant in
Kentucky, but have you ever seen a Jap energy plant anywhere in the
US?).

If mankind wants a high quality of life and the preservation of
natural ecosystems then mankind better start cutting it's reproductive
rate and begin to lower it's population. You can blame the dogma and
directives of various religious beliefs that advocate the duty to
reproduce leading to an ever increasing human population as god's
will. When it comes down to human population vs ecology, the major
religions of the earth have always advocated on the side of greater
human population growth and have been more than content to let the
ecology of the planet "go to hell" if it meant more real estate and
more resources for people.

The pope is dead, and another similarly-minded neanderthal will soon
replace him. Too bad that faith-based religion won't be buried with
him.

 

....as opposed to the faith-based religion of global warming, or perhaps
nihilism would be your preference.

Bill Putney
(To reply by e-mail, replace the last letter of the alphabet in my
adddress with the letter 'x')

 

Someone wrote: "Anybody who believes that environmental laws are responsible
for the lack of new refineries probably has stock in oil companies or they
are simply morons who probably believed all the lies by Enron about the
sudden lack of generating capacity and other lies causing power shortages in
California, which were blamed on environmental laws blocking new power lines
and etc. It is utterly amazing at the number of complete idiots in the U.S.
who either smoked too much dope or believe that everyone should be equally
stupid and are doing their part to prove it."

I live 5 miles from the last refinery built in the US. The name of that
refinery is Marathon-Ashland Oil Refinery in Garyville, LA. I do not work
for them but do work for another major chemical company that also has
several oil refineries. The area I live in has several other grain
elevators, chemical plants and oil refineries that are lined up and down
both sides of the Mississippi River.

In the last 10 years, several of theses facilities have shut down either due
to market conditions (supply and demand), cost of raw materials, inability
to expand to increase production or they moved their operations overseas to
reduce cost. Did we (US workers), who demand benefits and higher wages
cause them to move or was that a contributing factor?

Eight years ago the company I work for announce it was building a new state
of the art facility with triple the production rate in China. The local
staff was devastated because this meant that another 40 workers were going
to lose their job. We fought back and the company decided to give us time
to increase production by debottlenecking the unit. A unit that has been
running at 120 percent above design capacity. A plan was laid out and
permits applied for. The DEQ had public meetings to discuss the permits and
we had over 800 people show up to protest against the expansion. The best
part was only about 200 were local residents. Several environmental groups
bus people to theses meetings from large urban areas paying them 25 dollars
each to stand out front and protest. The DEQ denied the permits and the
unit did not expand.

Luckily market needs for the product had dropped and the Chinese plant did
not get built. The unit continued to run until last year when it was
shutdown and the company decided to longer manufacture that chemical as the
EPA is trying to ban its use in the US. The same type of protest and
rigorous permitting process has made doing business in both the oil business
and chemical business tough in the US. The last refinery built in the US,
Marathon-Ashland Oil refinery recently went through a permit process and
built a coker unit to squeeze more gasoline and other products out of a
barrel of oil.

In the last 25 years, several chemical plants and oil refineries have
shutdown. In my area several new plants have been attempted to be built but
the permits to build were either denied by DEQ or local government due to
public pressure or the companies took their business somewhere else
(overseas). Refineries throughout the US are all running over 100 percent
design capacity. Companies and DEQ have bowed down to public pressure to
expand rather then build new. Environmental laws have hindered production
due to limitation on equipment to prevent pollution. Good, yes but also
bad.

What the US needs is more new refineries are new production units within
current facilities. Most facilities cannot expand past a certain point due
to environmental laws. Such laws a required green zones around facilities.
Many companies have been forced to buy out the community around them at more
then market price.

So the someone who wrote: "It is utterly amazing at the number of complete
idiots in the U.S. who either smoked too much dope or believe that everyone
should be equally stupid and are doing their part to prove it." Stay off
the crack cocaine or get an education on what a barrel of oil produce. I
will be looking for your reply by smoke signal since the computer you are
using was built from chemicals made from a barrel of oil.

Sarge

 

Maybe it's because of the dismal record of obeying existing
environmental rules that they are being prevented from expanding their
current sites or building new ones. (actually, expansion of existing
sites seems to be happening all the time - see article below re:
capacity creep).

http://www.mindfully.org/Air/US-Reconsiders-Enforcement.htm
http://www.refineryreform.org/refinery_basics.htm

It's surprising that increases to refinery capacity hasn't been
approved given an extremely pro-oil-industry white house that could
invoke homeland security reasons to allow such expansion.

I suspect that the upward spiral in gas prices was planned so that Joe
Citizen would put pressure on congress to allow drilling in the Alaska
wildlife refuge, thinking that such drilling would be the remedy for
high gas prices. High prices are probably exactly what this
administration wants (for now). The tapping of the strategic reserve,
which some have called for, would clearly have done nothing to impact
gas prices since the bottleneck is refining capacity.

In this article:

http://www.gasandoil.com/goc/news/ntn42472.htm

The reason for the lack of new refineries isin't specifically blamed
on enviromental protests. Instead, it seems that the high(er?) costs
to produce fuels that meet (current? pending?) EPA standards is
blamed for the relatively poor return on the construction of new
plants. That, and something called "capacity creep" which is allowing
existing plants to refine more product, paints a picture that the
construction of new plants (or a new plant) is not satisfactory from a
profit point of view.

And here's the understatment of the year:

"I'm certainly not worried about an oversupply of refining capacity"

- Joanne Shore, senior analyst with the Energy Information
Administration

Might want to look here for some interesting info:

http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/oog/info/gdu/gasdiesel.asp

Oh, and by the way.

Just remember that oil is traded in US dollars, and that the
currencies of oil producing countries like Saudia Arabia is pegged at
a constant relationship to the US dollar. So when the US dollar
slides in value relative to other world currencies (like the Euro),
the sheiks in saudia arabia want their petro-dollars to buy them as
much Mercedes now as in the past, so the price of crude goes up to
compensate. The US is disproportionatly affected (in a negative way)
when crude goes up in price (vs the Euro zone, and Canada). That's
what you get when your currency is trading near junk-bond status.

 

You are right..... California passed deregulation laws based on the
assumption that large private corporations were honest. How stupid can you
get.

By the way, gas is expensive because oil is expensive. The Chinese have
signed numerous long term contracts for oil. They will be eating oil by the
barrel starting now. Some experts expect $100 per barrel oil very soon. In
which case the US will have to seriously reduce its appetite for gasoline
and we will be happy that we did not waste money building those refineries
you want.

 

Yeah - I hear liberals talking constantly about how they are so
impressed with the honesty of large corporations. Get real.


How stupid can you

Doubtful. You can find an "expert" to say anything.

Hmmm - you'd think that the scarcer a commodity gets, the more efficient
you need to become in the processing (in this case, squeeze as much
finished product out of a barrel of crude - hard to do with old
refineries, equipement, and processes).

Bill Putney
(To reply by e-mail, replace the last letter of the alphabet in my
adddress with the letter 'x')