July 22, 2007, Refined tastes
What to make of the Grey Lady's lead story that a series of unfortunate events have caused the nation's refineries to perform well under capacity, thereby depriving the nation of a fair amount of refined petroleum products, which, given steady or increasing demand to fill the nation's SUVs for those long driveway rides up to the McMansions... has resulted in significant increases in the price of gasoline?
Clearly, maintenance delayed is... profitable, at least in the oil patch. (No comment re: the effect of overall delayed maintenance on the nation's overall infrastructure, such as that of a steam-pipe explosion right outside TD's old office building which killed one person and injured a number and opened a crater and caused mega-disruption in mid-town Manhattan this week... well, I'll just say that this sort of thing will cause damage likely to cumulatively dwarf anything terrorists ever do if adequate investment in the nation's complex infrastructure is not made).
Who'd have thought that such short-term thinking could make sense...( At least, in the oil-patch that is... the decision to defer maintenance to keep pumping and take advantage of higher oil prices... leads to even higher oil prices, though refineries unable to deliver are, themselves less profitable.)
Given that our nation is run by (purported) oil company executives... maybe this makes some sense (even if they seldom do).
Comments
TBogg touched on this around Katrina
Posted by julia at July 22, 2007 8:51 PM