In the aftermath of Superstorm Sandy, it’s still unclear whether consumers will see a nationwide gas spike.
One bit of good news: The Northeast’s largest refinery is coming back online. The Philadelphia Energy Solutions plant, which processes a third of the region’s oil, said it was “without issues.” Keep reading →
Refining has long been a low-margin business, not for the faint of heart. The difference between what refiners pay for input and what they get for output, known as the crack spread, is traded on major oil markets. It sometimes goes negative, meaning refiners lose money on every barrel.
In the 1970s, with widespread worries over fuel supplies, US refiners overbuilt capacity. Since the 1980s, refiners have sold, merged, and shut down excess capacity, and upgraded capabilities, resulting in fewer refiners but more capacity actually utilized and better economics overall. Keep reading →
Firefighters have contained a blaze at Chevron Corp.’s (CVX) Richmond refinery in California, but the fire, which broke out Monday, is still burning.
Eni SpA, Italy’s biggest energy company by market value, said Tuesday that a refining boom in the Middle East is putting pressure on European refiners because the MidEast producers, who have lower costs, are now entering the market in Europe especially the Mediterranean. “Italy was a hub for Middle Eastern crude, but not anymore as Middle East [oil companies] are now vertically integrated,” Domenico Elefante, Eni’s executive vice president for refining, told Dow Jones Newswires on the sidelines of the Global Refining Summit in Barcelona. Elefante also said it isn’t a problem for Eni to replace Iranian barrels which are subject to western sanctions as the import volumes have been low. He didn’t provide further details on the volumes.
Depending on who you ask, the impending closure of a major Philadelphia refinery will either increase U.S. vulnerability to a terrorist attack on its energy supply, or simply shift demand to other suppliers of petroleum products.
Senior officials from federal energy and homeland security departments debated the loss of U.S. refining capacity with industry representatives and politicians at a field hearing of a Congressional committee outside Philadelphia on Monday. Keep reading →
