I'm in sunny St. Croix, USVI for a couple months. St. Croix has the second largest oil refinery in the western hemisphere. It was built in 1967 (I think) and is owned by Hess oil company. It processes 350,000 BARRELS of oil a day into 7 different kinds of fuel. Hess announced Tuesday it will close the refinery in 90 days.

Hess employees 2000 people, the biggest and highest paying employer on St. Croix. St. Croix has a population of about 55,000. Needless to say, the economy will be severally affected.

I think the oil industry uses the measure of 40 gallons to a barrel. That is 14,000,000 gallons of fuel a day that will not be available on the market. Think gas prices will be affected?

Sure why not, if they have been increasing price because of the turmoil in the middle East, and yet there were no oil interruptions. And with a plant shutting down, they really have an excuse to raise prices. Oh well, what else is new. lol

I smell agenda!!

you know, i dont understand how that can be i agree i smell something fishy

You can check the story here.

After reading the article it doesn't appear that it will raise the cost of gas , however local gas jumped .04 cents a gallon yesterday here in Tempe.

Stocked wrote:
After reading the article it doesn't appear that it will raise the cost of gas , however local gas jumped .04 cents a gallon yesterday here in Tempe.


Yea right. and the used car salesman said it was only surface rust.

davej wrote:
Stocked wrote:
After reading the article it doesn't appear that it will raise the cost of gas , however local gas jumped .04 cents a gallon yesterday here in Tempe.


Yea right. and the used car salesman said it was only surface rust.: laugh:

#%*# oil companies.

Current position to date: If you believe the investment banks – who all have oil funds to sell to the credulous – Far Eastern demand is holding up, supplies are tight, and stocks are low, so prices are set to rise to maybe $120 or above in 2012, even in the absence of fisticuffs involving Iran.

I take a different view. I see real demand – as opposed to financial demand and stock-piling, such as in the copper market – declining in 2012 as the financial crisis continues at best, and deepens at worst, particularly in the EU. Stocks are low because bank financing of stock is disappearing as banks retrench, and it makes no sense for traders to hold stocks if forward prices are lower than today’s price.

As for supplies, US crude oil production is probably higher, and consumption lower, than widely appreciated. Elsewhere, there is plenty of oil available now that much of the Dark Inventory has been liquidated, and this liquidation was probably why in November 2011 we saw the highest Saudi monthly deliveries in 30 years.

Finally, we see North Sea oil being shipped – for the first time since 2008 – half way around the world to find Far East buyers. We also see Petroplus, a major independent Swiss refiner, crippled by inflated crude oil prices, and shutting down three refineries because demand for its products has disappeared, and it can no longer finance crude oil purchases now that banks have pulled its credit lines, in US their will be closing of refineries down, same goes in the US do to demand of products that have or will disapper refineries can no longer afford crude oil prices in 2011-2012.

In my world, refineries closed due to reduced demand for their products imply a reduction in demand for crude oil: but not, apparently, on the Planet Hype of investment banks with funds to sell.

History does not repeat itself, but it does rhyme, and my forecast is that the crude oil price will fall dramatically during the first half of 2012, possibly as low as $45 to $55 per barrel.

Then What?.......As the price collapses we will see producer nations generally and OPEC in particular once again going into panic mode, and genuinely cutting production. We will also see the next great regulatory scandal where a legion of risk-averse retail investors who have lost most or all of their investment will not be pleased to hear that they were warned on Page 5, paragraph (b); clause (iv) of their customer agreement that markets could go down as well as up.

At this point, I hope and expect that consumer and producer nations might finally get their heads together and agree that whereas the former seeks a stable low price, and the latter a stable high price, they actually have an interest – even if intermediaries do not – in agreeing a formula for a stable fair price.