5-14-2011

Oil refiners’ big profits help keep gasoline prices high Read more: http://www.kansascity.com/2011/05/14/28 ... z1MQ5yHJgC

The conventional wisdom has been that gasoline shot to about $4 a gallon because the price of oil soared.

But that ignores a key factor: Even though U.S. gasoline use is declining, refiners have kept U.S. stockpiles below average by curbing production and exporting more gasoline.

That has kept prices up — and doubled oil refinery profits. Refineries are on track to reap their best profits in years.

“It’s a good day to own a refinery,” said Steve Mosby, vice president of Admo Energy, a fuel supply consulting company for fuel retailers.

The Kansas City Star asked WTRG Economics, an energy consulting firm, to calculate U.S. refinery margins using the oil costs actually paid by refineries, rather than the benchmark prices.

Doing that, WTRG calculated that the average U.S. refinery margin in January was 42 cents a gallon. By April it increased to 64 cents, a 50 percent jump. The first week of May it climbed to 78 cents, and the second week it has averaged 80 cents a gallon.

The Energy Information Administration last week said demand for gasoline had fallen 2.9 percent in the last month, while the country’s refineries were using only 81.7 percent of their capacity. That meant they were processing 900,000 fewer barrels a day of gasoline than a year ago.

Refineries also are exporting more gasoline, especially to Mexico and Latin America. In February, the most recent month for which figures were available, the U.S. exported 400,000 barrels of gasoline a day, or about 5 percent of U.S. demand.

U.S. exports are at their highest levels since the information started being collected in 1945.

“They’re cutting (U.S. gas stockpiles) back to keep prices up,” said Slocum, of Public Citizen.

Well after Obama released Reserve Oil for only the third time in history the oil thugs have already surpassed the original oil price over $100 and gas is climbing back towards $5 here in Chicago fast.

Already have stations back up to $4.89 for regular.

7-13-2011

Motorists driving less, but gas prices keep rising

US drivers see higher gas prices despite 4 months of fewer trips to the pump

"If you look at the macro-economic headlines, we should be closer to $67 (per barrel) than $97" for WTI, analyst Stephen Schork said. But many traders "are going to keep pushing things to see how far they go."

"The market is just looking for an excuse to go higher," said Tom Kloza, publisher and chief oil analyst at Oil Price Information Service.

Gasoline is getting more expensive even though motorists continue to cut back. MasterCard SpendingPulse said Tuesday that gasoline consumption has dropped for 16 weeks in a row. SpendingPulse, which tracks credit card payments around the country, said the four-week average for gasoline demand fell by 1.1 percent last week compared to a year ago.

Demand even dropped over the July 4 weekend, usually a time for lots of road trips. MasterCard analyst Jason Gamel said motorists used 1.7 percent less this year than they did during last year's holiday weekend.

On Tuesday, both the U.S. Energy Information Administration and the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries forecast that world oil demand will increase to record levels this year.

EIA added that global oil production won't be enough to satisfy demand. The U.S. and other countries will have to keep dipping into spare supplies, if they don't want prices to spiral out of control, the EIA said.

Oil down around $80 yet gas is still over $4 at many stations in Chicago

Here is my new hero

8-19-2011

U.S. oil speculative data released by Senator, sparking ire

Oil trading data that exposed the extensive positions speculators held in the run-up to record high prices in 2008 were intentionally leaked by a U.S. senator, sparking broader concern about industry confidentiality as Congress moves on Wall Street reform.

Senator Bernie Sanders, a staunch critic of oil speculators, leaked the information to a major newspaper in a move that has unsettled both regulators and Wall Street alike.

In a June 16 e-mail reviewed by Reuters, a senior policy adviser to Sanders discusses how his office received private data with the names and positions of traders and forwarded it exclusively to a Wall Street Journal reporter.

In a statement from Sanders provided to Reuters, Sanders said he felt the data needed to be publicly aired.

"The CFTC has kept this information hidden from the American public for nearly three years," he said. "This is an outrage. The American people have a right to know exactly who caused gas prices to skyrocket in 2008 and who is causing them to spike today."

it's dropping to near $3.50 in SoCal

Move from Chicago .. crap weather and goofy gas prices

We are moving 40 miles west of Chicago

Gas runs about 20 cents cheaper

Weather?

Well runs close to 20 degrees colder in winter due to Fox River Valley like a wind tunnel to Canada.

Well, there are a lot of oil in the world right now, and that oil is trying to find a home, said Stephen Corry, director of investment strategy at Merrill Lynch in Hong Kong. We see that the surplus oil tankers is set and the price of futures contracts is higher to offset the cost of storage.

This will double or even more gas prices in the U.S.

Someone really needs to stop these Republican Koch brothers

11-16-2011

Koch Brothers to ship U.S. and Canadian Oil to ChinaKoch Brothers to ship U.S. and Canadian Oil to China


Enbridge Inc and TransCanada Corp have raced forward with new pipeline plans in the fierce battle to unclog a year-long U.S. oil bottleneck

After purchasing ConocoPhillips' stake in the 350,000 barrel-per-day Seaway pipeline for $1.15 billion, Enbridge and new partner Enterprise Products Partners said they plan to reverse the line's flow to send crude locked up at the Cushing, Oklahoma, oil hub to the Texas coast.

TransCanada said it could begin construction of a similar Cushing-to-Gulf-Coast pipeline spur of its proposed Keystone XL pipeline early next year, pending consultations with the U.S. State Department which last week postponed approval of the full-length Canada-to-Texas line to study a new route.

The companies are racing to unlock a glut of crude in the U.S. Midwest, which has built up over the year due to rising supplies from Canada and North Dakota. They aim to ship it to the Gulf Coast where it will fetch a hefty premium and help producers achieve a higher price for their output, although it will also rob midcontinent refiners of the cheap crude they have enjoyed this year.

The news sparked a rapid narrowing in an oil spread that upended energy markets this year, spurred a rail oil shipping bonanza and roiled airline efforts to hedge fuel costs.

Oil traders reacted swiftly to the news. U.S. crude surged by nearly $2 a barrel while Brent crude remained $1 lower -- narrowing the so-called Brent/WTI spread to below $10 a barrel for the first time since April.

The spread, rarely more than a few dollars in past years, surged this year due to ballooning inventories around the Cushing, Oklahoma, delivery point for the U.S. oil contract and hit a record $28 a barrel in October.

Caisse, Canada's largest pension fund administrator with C$199 billion in assets under management is among the Canadian pension funds who are increasingly looking toward direct investments in the resources sector, having emerged from the global financial crisis as some of the world's most deep-pocketed private equity investors.

Conoco's pipeline deals, part of its strategy to shed assets it no longer considers strategic, totaled $2 billion, the U.S. oil company said.

The deals are part of the company's effort to improve its valuation with up to $20 billion of asset sales targeted to properties the company no longer considers strategic. Conoco, the third largest U.S. oil company, also has plans to spin off its refining assets next year.

I said from the beginning the U.S. going into Afghanistan was for the oil just like Iraq but all the war supporters swore there was no oil there.

Well after spending trillions of dollars and so many lost soldiers lives China swoops in and gets the black gold from under our feet

12-29-2011

http://news.yahoo.com/afghanistan-signs ... 07384.html

Afghanistan signs $7 billion oil deal with China

Afghanistan on Wednesday signed an oil deal with China which could earn the war-torn country $7 billion over 25 years.

Lu Gong Xun, who is president of CNPC's international branch, said his company has agreed to build a refinery and was expected to invest about $400 million in the project, which will also create hundreds of local jobs.

Six oil deposits have been discovered in Afghanistan, including one elsewhere in the north estimated to be worth 1.8 billion barrels, as well as in Herat in the west, Helmand in the south and Paktia in the southeast.

One of reasons may not just be oil but potentially the break down in negotiations of UNOCAL Corporation and the Taliban to build a pipeline though western Afghanistan:


http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/1984459.stm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trans-Afgh ... l_features

To some it may be the rights of the woman and the war on terrorism.

Also Opium was being destroyed by the Taliban and now the region is littered and may be world leader supplier for Opium once again.