[MEDIK418]

I agree we see things differently and I wish to point out a couple of things you mentioned that are simply not as it happened.
First was step three: Nothing has changed in the refining process in the past few years? This is ludicrous. I refer you to the last post I made. Consider the cost of refining gasoline. The utility cost, natural gas, electricity, water, has gone out of sight over the past few years.

As I said, the refiners pay the same price you do for all of these things. This winter harbors an approximate 50-60 percent hike in natural gas and the past two years have seen these prices skyrocket. To say this hasn't affected the cost of refining gasoline is simply wrong.
And yes, the refining processes themselves have changed in many states due to state and federal legislation for "beautique fuels" that California for one has seen fit to force on the refiners. The capital investments alone for our company number in the billions in the last few years just to lower the sulfur content in gasoline and diesel.
These are facts and you cannot ignore them. ConocoPhillips made 13 billion dollars last quarter. A good chunk of change indeed. They also invested more than 13 billion in capital projects that will go toward finding more crude outside the OPEC countries in hopes of not having to depend so much on them.

Transportation to refineries hasn't changed much? Did you know that the oil companies are building safer double hulled tankers soce the Exxon Valdeez decided to dump it's load on the Alaskan coastline? They are much less prone to leaks but they haul considerably less than the older tankers and last time I checked, the price of steel has pretty much gone the way of oil and gas since these tankers were started. You can't tell me that building a dozen of these monsters in as short a time as they have doesn't raise the cost of transporting oil.


Transportation to gas stations indeed has gone up some but as you mentioned not enough to cause a signifigant rise but the major oil companies generally don't deliver their own gasoline. Jobbers do this. Yes there are a few who do own their own trucks but for the most part, distributors haul it.

Taxes. During the whole Katrina thing, the price of gas at the refinery has risen 26 cents a gallon. The American Petroleum Institute bears this out. Of that price, you failed to mention that 9 cents of that hike was taxes. Yes, taxes. Three cents a gallon was added just because of the added profit. I never said the prices weren't set rediculously high for no apparent reason but lets' be honest about who was charging what here.
Again, don't let the facts get in the way.

You mentioned that 30 percent of the nation's refining capacity was llost and you are correct, on that we agree. The only places where gasoline prices should have been affected was the deep south. As a rule we don't truck gasoline all over the country. The prices we saw for the rest of the country were rediculous BUT, look at the refinery prices. They didn't reflect the gouging levels we saw in many places.
Remember the "Beautique fuels" I mentioned earlier? You can't shift gasoline from one state to another simply because one state's refiers who have been forced to meet that state's stringent fuel requirements can't just up and change the way they refine gasoline to satisfy a neighboring market. You run out of your state's fuel, there's a better than average chance, you can't borrow some from the folks next door.

I disagree with the assertion that the Jobber feared shortages in the fuel suplies bacause of the reduced refining capacity. Remember the big oil crisis in the early seventies? There was no shortage of gasoline. Our tanks were brimming full and most of the refineries were scrambling to find places to store the stuff. I'm not making this up. The public's panic buying caused spot shortages. PERIOD!
Jobbers know that people tend to go off the deep end when a perceived threat to the supply is valid enough in their minds to cause them peoblems in the not too distant future. Jobbers know this and they bid higher bacause they know the war for supplies will heat up when the trucks can no longer get their deliveries made fast enough to keep the spot shortages down. Stations wil begin to run dry from the block long lines of cars trying to get every drop they can squeeze out of the pump. This has happened over and over again and the jobbers know the drill. It has nothing to do with decreasing gasoline supplies. True, the deep suth would have suffered before too long but the rest of the country was never in any danger.

I'll never say that the big oil companies don't know their way around the business world or the buying public. Some of the shadiest deals of the century happened in oil company board rooms. What I am trying to convey is that if you look into the prices paid at the refinery for gasoline, you will see that they didn't reflect the rediculous increases we saw at the pumps this year.

One more thing and I'll shut up. Where were all of your concerns for the past 20 years when most of the refiners in this country were running in the red? Yes they made big money but have you thought about how the money was reinvested? This year alone, our company committed to 34 billion dollars in projects that will enhance our ability to produce cheaper fuels or increase the supply of crude and natural gas. You see, they havent been able to do that in about 20 years. '99 and 2001 were good years but after that, it's been a bust for two decades.
Before you go off about the millions the CEO's make, I agree they make way more money than I think they should but even if you took half of their salaries away to offset the price of gasoline for however long it would last, the affect wouldn't last a day or two.. . we use too much of the stuff for it to make a difference.

Stop listening to politicians who don't have a clue. If you ever want to find out how completely wrong the press and the government are on a particular subject, wait until they do a story on somethng you are intimately familiar with.

I remember back in the early seventies a Texas Congressman no less made the comment for all the world to hear that "if these refineries would run 24 hours a day instead of going home at 5 o'clock, there wouldn't be any gas shortage"
You know what? The public believed him. Hell, I believed him. I had no clue how much or how long it takes to start a refinery and most of the world still doesn't.
How stupid can one person be?