Refinery Outages and Gas

**Red Harvest** · 09-02-2005, 18:41

Originally Posted by strike for the south

3.30 in houston jeez its still only 2.69 here sad 10 years ago it was 99 cents

That 3.30 seems limited to a few stations now. The others are running about 2.79 to 3.00 at the moment. Houston tends to be a little higher than some areas, I think it is the required blends, but I'm not sure. The gasoline market is not my thing.

**Ser Clegane** · 09-02-2005, 18:46

Originally Posted by Red Harvest

That 3.30 seems limited to a few stations now. The others are running about 2.79 to 3.00 at the moment. Houston tends to be a little higher than some areas, I think it is the required blends, but I'm not sure. The gasoline market is not my thing.

I talked to a colleague in North Carolina today and she mentioned that there were quite a number of gas stations actually running out of gas there

What share of the refinery capacity is currently effected?

I heard ballpark numbers in the range of 20% of capacity but that was rather hearsay...

I guess we will see quite some price peaks on the petrochemicals spot market as well over the next weeks/months

**Don Corleone** · 09-02-2005, 18:54

Originally Posted by Ser Clegane

I talked to a colleague in North Carolina today and she mentioned that there were quite a number of gas stations actually running out of gas there

What share of the refinery capacity is currently effected?

I heard ballpark numbers in the range of 20% of capacity but that was rather hearsay...

I guess we will see quite some price peaks on the petrochemicals spot market as well over the next weeks/months

Yep, half the stations in the city of Charlotte are out. Greensboro is out at about 1/3. The price has increased quite a bit, and the Governor has asked that all non-essential driving be cancelled.

We currently receive 90% of our refined gasoline from the gulf refineries, through a pipeline. Those pipelines are now pumping ~30% of what they were 5 days ago. At current rates, they expect the entire state to be dry by next Wednesday. South Carolina, Georgia, Tenessee, Florida, Alababama, and of course, Mississipi & Lousiana are in much of the same pickle.

**Red Harvest** · 09-02-2005, 19:46

Originally Posted by Don Corleone

Yep, half the stations in the city of Charlotte are out. Greensboro is out at about 1/3. The price has increased quite a bit, and the Governor has asked that all non-essential driving be cancelled.

We currently receive 90% of our refined gasoline from the gulf refineries, through a pipeline. Those pipelines are now pumping ~30% of what they were 5 days ago. At current rates, they expect the entire state to be dry by next Wednesday. South Carolina, Georgia, Tenessee, Florida, Alababama, and of course, Mississipi & Lousiana are in much of the same pickle.

Yes, that was anticipated/feared early on, the pumping stations are coming back, but at reduced rates. Pipelines are very expensive to build and maintain (so we get back to the market forces part again.) Interconnection will be limited since most of the time it would not be useful. It is going to be a major crisis regionally. I'm sorry it is going to hit you guys so hard, I hope they figure out some sort of response. Some stations in rural areas here that had trouble arranging deliveries didn't raise their price outlandishly, instead they limited folks to ~10 gallons each.

This storm hit oil production, nat. gas production, refining, and distribution really hard. Nail the hub with something this big, and you have to expect major trouble.

**drone** · 09-02-2005, 19:01

Originally Posted by Ser Clegane

I talked to a colleague in North Carolina today and she mentioned that there were quite a number of gas stations actually running out of gas there

What share of the refinery capacity is currently effected?

I heard ballpark numbers in the range of 20% of capacity but that was rather hearsay...

I guess we will see quite some price peaks on the petrochemicals spot market as well over the next weeks/months

I just drove by a Shell station that had $5.99 a gallon on the sign. Sinice an Exxon Station down the road still had $3 a gallon, I'm assuming that Shell station is out, or close to it (or just gouging like mad).

**yesdachi** · 09-02-2005, 19:30

Does anyone know what kind of preparations gas stations make to handle a situation where their regular gas distributor is unavailable? Most companies I work with have back-up vendors and some have back-ups to the back-ups. Can gas stations use other vendors for gas? A gas station cant make money without a product, as greedy as they seem to be I would think they would have a back-up to their back-up.

Perhaps if they have sold their entire supply at double the regular price they don’t care.

**Don Corleone** · 09-02-2005, 19:35

The problem isn't the distributor, it's the source. If you follow the flow of refined gasoline around the country, it all flows through pipelines and rail cars from I believe 5 major refineries. They're not interconnected. If your backup, and your backup's backup, and so on are all connected to the same pipleline, there ain't much you can do.

**Gawain of Orkeny** · 09-02-2005, 23:18

Gawain, Read what you just wrote and think about it for awhile. As I said before the price of OIL was not being limited by refining. You bought the Saudi line. If we shut off refining in the U.S. enough, oil prices worldwide will fall, because we are an net importer, and this would reduce our need for imports. Myth Busted.

Thats what you claim I say the opposite. So your saying if we shut off refining here the price of oil worldwide will go down? Have you lost your mind? How will that make us need less gas. It means we will have to import all our oil and refined products instead of a bit more than half as we currently do now driving worldwide prices through the roof. Hell according to this logic we should have shut them down a longtime ago. Myth busted.

**Red Harvest** · 09-03-2005, 00:11

Originally Posted by Gawain of Orkeny

Thats what you claim I say the opposite. So your saying if we shut off refining here the price of oil worldwide will go down? Have you lost your mind? How will that make us need less gas. It means we will have to import all our oil and refined products instead of a bit more than half as we currently do now driving worldwide prices through the roof. Hell according to this logic we should have shut them down a longtime ago. Myth busted.

Gawain, now I understand why you are having trouble with all this. If we shut down our refineries we will not be using nearly as much oil and gasoline because we would only be able to import some fraction. Locally, at home our prices would be astronomical. World prices would tumble because there would be global oversupply. We wouldn't benefit from it.

That would persist for some time until global demand caught up or we adjusted to importing gasoline (infrastructure changes for transport, etc.) It would persist longer since it would likely cause global recession. But the excess would be soaked up by the world eventually (on the scale of years) as demand grew.

You share a problem common to many other Americans: the inability to separate gasoline from oil in their minds. Yes, they are related, but they are not the same thing. The second prooblem you share with many others is that you cannot tell the difference between regional and global impacts/markets/driving forces.