Repercussions for people outside New Orleans

Jay Honeck wrote:



But it's an inevitable and utterly predictable result of our government's
ill-thought-out destruction of independently owned gas stations in the 1980s
and '90s. All we have left now are the big company stations, controlled by
a relatively small number of owners -- so it's easy for them to control
pricing.

That's BS. Here in Montana we had regulated gas prices until about 5
years ago. Every link in the chain was required to sell it for at least
8% more than he bought it for. The reasoning was to protect the little
guy. Screw the little guy. If you can't make a profit then go do
something else. As soon as we got rid of that stupid law gas prices
fell because everyone could set their own price. To say the big guys
come in and force the price up is a red herring. Today the most
expensive gas is always the mom and pop shop. Here the cheapest gas is
at Costco, one of the larger companies. Next cheapest is the medium
sized stations with convenience stores, like Super America. They use
their cheap gas to get you in the store to buy overpriced dairy products
and donuts. Then comes mom and pop, bitching about the damn corporations

What 99.5% of people fail to understand is that without getting certain
parts of the infrstructure back online, it won't matter how much crude
you release from the national reserves because the refining and
delivery system won't be online.

Right now you have just about 2.5 million barrels per day refining
completely shut down for one if not all three of the following reasons:

1: The plant itself is under water. If there is as little as 6" of
water in a lot of these plants, the units can't be run because many of
the pumps and their motors are in standing water.

2. They don't have any electricty....no power no operations

3. The natural gas piplines that provide the fuel to run the plants are
not operating....same outcome as #2.

One thing that has greatly helped is that the EPA had temporarily
dropped the rules on reformulated gas. Under the rules the gas that was
blended for the northeast coupldn't be piped anywhwere else because of
the smog rules. And so on and so on. What this means is that the
plants can run just a single blend of regular unleaded instead of the
60+ custom blends that the EPA mandated. This allows the plants to run
longer production runs and not have to limit the runs on how much of
one blend or another they need. Now they can run until all the storage
capacity is filled with the single blend and not get gonged by the EPA.
In the short term it's going to play some havok with the smog levels
in some locations, but that's better than having the entire country
screwed up by idiodic rules.

The worst thing people can do now is panic over the price and start
trying to hoard and store fuel. That causes an artificial shortage. One
station operator in Atlanta pointed out one customer to a news crew.
Said that he was in the station with a third vehicle and six more jerry
cans in less than an hour....just what we need.....

Once things shake out a little and the pipeline people and the plant
operations people get their basic power, water, fuel and feedstocks
back into some kind of operation, there won't as much of a problem.
Most of the drilling and production companies are already working to
get the rigs and production platforms back into action as fast as
possible.

BTW most places price their fuel based on what the next tanker drop is
expected to cost them and not what the current stock cost, and they
base that number on the daily spot market price.

Craig C.

wrote:
What 99.5% of people fail to understand is that without getting certain
parts of the infrstructure back online, it won't matter how much crude
you release from the national reserves because the refining and
delivery system won't be online.

Exactly. If nothing else, this should demonstrate to people just how
thin our supply lines really er... for evrything, not just gasoline.
I have often said that we are now just a disater away from anarchy,
and this hiurricane shows illustrates that.

Listen up people, it is WAY past time for us to develop more of our
own oil reserves and build another refinery (at least). We are now
seeing the absolute total folly of not building required infrastructure
to support our current economic lifestyles.

Personally, if I were in a position of responsibility and had failed
so miserably at maintaining adequate facilities and preparing contingent
operations I should FIRED.... perion, end of story.

Listen up people, it is WAY past time for us to develop more of our
own oil reserves and build another refinery (at least). We are now
seeing the absolute total folly of not building required infrastructure
to support our current economic lifestyles.

Personally, if I were in a position of responsibility and had failed
so miserably at maintaining adequate facilities and preparing contingent
operations I should FIRED.... perion, end of story.

They can't maintain contingent operations, because they can't build new
refineries -- period.

Look at the environmental laws that restrict refineries. Look at the number
of refineries built since those laws hit the books.

It ain't a coincidence, and anyone who says that the "free market" is at
work here just hasn't looked at the problem.
--
Jay Honeck
Iowa City, IA
Pathfinder N56993
www.AlexisParkInn.com
"Your Aviation Destination"

"Jay Honeck" wrote in message
news:XpERe.80402$084.49625@attbi_s22...
Listen up people, it is WAY past time for us to develop more of our
own oil reserves and build another refinery (at least). We are now
seeing the absolute total folly of not building required infrastructure
to support our current economic lifestyles.

Personally, if I were in a position of responsibility and had failed
so miserably at maintaining adequate facilities and preparing contingent
operations I should FIRED.... perion, end of story.

They can't maintain contingent operations, because they can't build new
refineries -- period.

Look at the environmental laws that restrict refineries. Look at the
number of refineries built since those laws hit the books.

It ain't a coincidence, and anyone who says that the "free market" is at
work here just hasn't looked at the problem.
--
Jay Honeck
Iowa City, IA
Pathfinder N56993
www.AlexisParkInn.com
"Your Aviation Destination"


What laws are you talking about?

Mike
MU-2

"Jay Honeck" wrote in message
news:XpERe.80402$084.49625@attbi_s22...
Listen up people, it is WAY past time for us to develop more of our
own oil reserves and build another refinery (at least). We are now
seeing the absolute total folly of not building required infrastructure
to support our current economic lifestyles.

Personally, if I were in a position of responsibility and had failed
so miserably at maintaining adequate facilities and preparing contingent
operations I should FIRED.... perion, end of story.

They can't maintain contingent operations, because they can't build new
refineries -- period.

Look at the environmental laws that restrict refineries. Look at the
number of refineries built since those laws hit the books.

It ain't a coincidence, and anyone who says that the "free market" is at
work here just hasn't looked at the problem.

The free market is at work which is why Europe is facing higher gas prices
as US buyers come looking for gas.

Personally I would shut them out and say if you were not buying from us
before go away, and leave the US to rot this time but money always wins out.

"Chris" wrote in message
...

"Jay Honeck" wrote in message
news:XpERe.80402$084.49625@attbi_s22...
Listen up people, it is WAY past time for us to develop more of our
own oil reserves and build another refinery (at least). We are now
seeing the absolute total folly of not building required infrastructure
to support our current economic lifestyles.

Personally, if I were in a position of responsibility and had failed
so miserably at maintaining adequate facilities and preparing contingent
operations I should FIRED.... perion, end of story.

They can't maintain contingent operations, because they can't build new
refineries -- period.

Look at the environmental laws that restrict refineries. Look at the
number of refineries built since those laws hit the books.

It ain't a coincidence, and anyone who says that the "free market" is at
work here just hasn't looked at the problem.

The free market is at work which is why Europe is facing higher gas prices
as US buyers come looking for gas.

Personally I would shut them out and say if you were not buying from us
before go away, and leave the US to rot this time but money always wins
out.


Actually if you owned the gasoline or worked for the people who owned it,
you would sell it to those who were willing to pay the most for it. You
would do this because you would know that there is somebody somewhere on the
planet that would be willing to sell to the US buyers for a higher price and
the only one hurt by your action would be you or those you represent. The
reality is that the worldwide supply of gasoline is now reduced from what it
was last week and therefore gasoline is worth more. The price will rise
until demand is reduced to equal supply. It is an inescapable fact.

Mike
MU-2

Actually if you owned the gasoline or worked for the people who owned it,
you would sell it to those who were willing to pay the most for it. You
would do this because you would know that there is somebody somewhere on
the planet that would be willing to sell to the US buyers for a higher
price and the only one hurt by your action would be you or those you
represent. The reality is that the worldwide supply of gasoline is now
reduced from what it was last week and therefore gasoline is worth more.
The price will rise until demand is reduced to equal supply. It is an
inescapable fact.

No one argues that it is supply and demand at work. It always is.

My point is that our "supply" side has been artificially restricted by
onerous environmental laws. These laws are so complex and expensive to
interpret that no one has built a new refinery in the U.S. since their
inception.

Thus, we find ourselves in the pickle we're in. One hurricane, and we're
*all* dead, economically.
--
Jay Honeck
Iowa City, IA
Pathfinder N56993
www.AlexisParkInn.com
"Your Aviation Destination"

Mike Rapoport wrote:
The
reality is that the worldwide supply of gasoline is now reduced from what it
was last week and therefore gasoline is worth more. The price will rise
until demand is reduced to equal supply. It is an inescapable fact.

It is really more of a distribution problem than a supply problem. It is a
fact that the 20+ different blends required by 20+ different states have
drastically reduced the efficiency of refineries and distribution channels.
This adds about 20 cents per gallon of cost to fuel.

Its like trying to pour W100 down a funnel.

On 2005-09-01, Chris wrote:
Personally I would shut them out and say if you were not buying from us
before go away, and leave the US to rot this time but money always wins out.

My, aren't you bitter.

--
Dylan Smith, Castletown, Isle of Man
Flying: http://www.dylansmith.net
Frontier Elite Universe: http://www.alioth.net
"Maintain thine airspeed, lest the ground come up and smite thee"