Thursday 12 April 2012

Oil refineries closing across the world


If anything illustrates Peak Oil this is it.

Comments from Mike Ruppert:

-- The core issue is return on investment. As Matthew Simmons explained to me back in 2001 this is not a new trend. Refineries are enormously expensive to build. Amortization of the capital cost to the point of positive return on investment for a refinery can be 20-30 years. And, as Simmons made so clear in his dissent from Dick Cheney's NEPDG in 2001, given Peak Oil, "the return on investment is uncertain." Colin Campbell also held remarkably similar views as he noted circa 2004, that the number of people being trained and educated for this highly-technical work has dropped off to virtually nothing because it is understood in the industry that the industry itself is downsizing and fading.

All this underscores my assessment that refineries (or lack thereof) and how much of various products (like diesel) they produce will play as much a factor in collapse as the availability of the resource itself. -- MCR


Energy: Refined out of existence
As petrol prices rise and western demand shrinks, refineries are closing across the developed world


6 April, 2012


Sunoco petrol stations are a fixture of the US eastern seaboard, their blue-and-yellow awnings touting the brand’s status as official fuel of Nascar racing. But after July, none of the petrol they sell will actually be made by Sunoco.

The 126-year-old company’s decision to quit the refining business is the latest sign of the tumult in downstream fuel markets that is accompanying a global shift in oil use. As consumption flags in developed economies and grows in emerging markets, refineries are dying from Japan to Pennsylvania, the Sunoco home state where oil wells drilled in the 1850s begat the petroleum age.

The upheaval highlights the challenges facing policy makers as rising petrol prices endanger growth in the world’s biggest economy. Washington has floated largely predictable responses: drill more, punish speculators, work harder towards energy self-sufficiency. But global trading on markets for petrol, diesel and heating oil highlight the persistent fact of America’s energy interdependence....


For article GO HERE

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