Gasoline Price Fixing? While Gas Prices riSE, Refiners Shut Their Doors, Causing a Glut of Crude Oil

[McCamy Taylor]

Crude oil prices have plunged and not just because Iran released those British hostages. The US Energy Department is expected to report that there is a domestic glut of crude oil, due to the fact that US refineries have locked their doors and refused to refine crude oil recently, despite rising gasoline prices which would normally be an incentive to produce more fuel.

http://www.star-telegram.com/100/story/63276.html

Crude oil plunged $2.77 a barrel in New York, the biggest decline in three months, on speculation that an Energy Department report will show that U.S. inventories jumped last week as refiners unexpectedly shut units.

Crude-oil supplies in Cushing, Okla., where oil traded in New York is delivered, surged 12 percent in the week ended March 30, Energy Department figures show.

"The continuing spate of refinery outages and maintenance issues is pushing product prices higher and putting downward pressure on crude," said Eric Wittenauer, an energy analyst at A.G. Edwards & Sons Inc. in St. Louis. "Until you see an uptick in refinery operations, crude oil will have a hard time rising."

<snip>

Refineries in Texas, California, Pennsylvania, Colorado, Ontario and Delaware have had to trim output over the past two months. The closing of Valero Energy Corp.'s McKee refinery near Sunray has contributed to the increase in supplies in Cushing.

At the same time, gasoline prices paid by consumers contine to rise, 13 cents a gallon on the west coast recently, 54 cents over the last ten weeks according to the same article.

Excuse me for being skeptical, but when refineries in so many different places have "technical" problems simultaneously, it makes me wonder if someone in the retail gasoline business is doing what Enron did to the citizens of California--price fixing.

Or, are oil industry insiders being told by Bush and Cheney to expect a sudden rise in the value of their crude oil stores once the US Military drops some bombs on Iran? Knowing that your crude oil will go up in value by 50-100% a barrel might make you hesitate to refine it too soon. That would be quite a windfall for anyone smart enough to sit tight and wait. Meanwhile, your buddies in the retail fuel business benefit from the idle refineries.

The whole thing stinks to me.

:wtf:

[formercia]

1. Perhaps they are trying to extract as much profit as they can

before the Dems really take the reins and clamp down on Big Oil.

[loudsue]

2. Dems aren't going to go after big oil, or they would have already done something

Ain't gonna happen. The oil companies have gotten so arrogant under bush, and the Dems have already been lobbied (or threatened) to the point that it will require riots in the streets before they'll act against big oil.

They, instead, are just trying to prepare the ground for support for alternative energy.

:kick::kick::kick: