Bryan Savage . . .( Snip. . . ) Shell Oil sold a small refinery last fall.
They wanted to tear it down and sell the land, but the nasty, incompetent
state government somehow forced them to sell it to a company that is using
it to produce ---- Gas. If the stupid government had stayed out of it, we
would have more grazing land in California and Shell Oil would have received
much less for the sale.
As a matter of fact I just happened to watch the congressional hearings on
just this topic. Shell oil was being soundly criticized for selling off an
American refinery to a foreign refiner, British Petroleum in this case.
Shell was also accused of lost production thereby purposely decreasing
supply because of the sale. The real fact is that the refinery is one of
the oldest facilities in the US and it is thee oldest property owned by
shell. It is antiquated, small, and inefficient with old technology. It was
no longer economically viable to dump more money into such a looser
facility. Shell had already poured an equal amount of capitol into a more
modern facility that resulted in improved efficiency, increased production
(far greater than the older facility) and at lower cost. Those charts are
part of the congressional record. (there was no mention of whether these
savings were passed on to the consumer!). Shell had been trying to sell the
refinery to and American buyer for more than a year with no takers! Finally,
BP made an offer but there were "issues" with a sale of an American asset to
a foreign oil company. Part of the hearings addressed how the sale was
accomplished and how legislators (your government) "assisted" in finally
making it happen. That was the end of the testimony. If I was to make a
guess; BP most likely wanted to grab market share in a competitive area and
was willing to buy a white elephant. Probably ten times cheaper than trying
to develop the market. Shell has increased production capacity in the area,
BP continues production, and the area now has one more competitor. With the
tight supply conditions today, it is doubtful there will be an influence on
price. But when the supply situation changes will the consumer benefit?
YMMV -Elon :-)
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