Woodchucker writes:
Oil sands are refined here and the product sold to – eyup the US. What isn’t refined is shipped in various levels of refinement. Costs to build new refineries at current Environmental standards are too much of a hit on the profit margins. Better to export to an old grandfathered refinery ( out of Country even better ), plus the by products become someone else’s “asset”.
Unless Woodchucker is speaking of Canada about which I have no information, it is just not true that oil refineries are a net loss. Here is the sleazy, slimy lying game that the dirty oil companies and their oily backers in the Republican Party play: The oil companies and their Republican whores are always yelling that environmentalists are keeping us from building new oil refineries. Every time there is a spike in gas prices, these scums all start screaming and yelling that we need to get rid of all the regulations on oil refineries so it will be profitable to build new refineries. Here is the truth. The regulations are no problem at all for building new refineries. They have built new ones in recent years and most of the older ones meet current emissions standards. Oil refineries make money. They are a good investment. The reason oil companies have built so many oil refineries is because they make a lot of money off the refined oil from these refineries which they then market all over the world. The truth is that the oil companies could build new refineries any time they want to, but they have chosen not to build any new ones for quite some time now. The reason that they have deliberately chosen not to build new refineries is because the oil companies want a permanent refinery shortage. With a permanent refinery shortage, there are frequent bottlenecks in supply that cause prices to be artificially high. So they maintain as few refineries as possible in order to keep prices as high as possible. If they built more refineries, they would still make money, just not as much. But they hate those regulations that they have to go by because it costs a lot of money to install new anti-pollution equipment. So in order to try to get rid of these regulations, they lie and say that the regulations are what is causing your gas prices to be so high and if it weren’t for those evil environmentalists, your gas would be a lot cheaper. The corporate media generally goes along with those disgusting charade. For many years, I thought that environmental regulations kept us from building new plants. There are only a few scattered voices in the media who actually tell the truth about the oil industry. The rest of the media are bought off corrupted whores are 100
All oil companies and argi companies should be government run
Jebus no big g. We have that in Canada and its sucks. Petro Canada and the Wheat Pools are failures as business models.
‘Petro Canada and the Wheat Pools are failures as business models.’
Pierre Elliott Truduea Rips Off Canada . N’est-ce pas ?
Robert I was speaking about Canada. They are not a net loss operation here, just more costly of a proposal. The area surrounding the Oil Sands in Alberta is a very costly construction and operation. Temporary foreign workers to provide additional labour and outsourced modular component construction from China to reduce raw material costs has not helped lower costs. And pipelines keep the White collar execs in their cushy homes in the suburbs and their high rise offices in the urban centers. Most people don’t want to live above the 49th parallel where winters are long and regular business takes traversing a large geographic region. Building a refinery in Canada by US conglomerates is likely a tertiary or lesser option. Buy the resources cheap and refine in the US is what they like. Plus in Canada almost all of our product goes to the US. We are slaves to that market because we cannot export elsewhere. But the Pipeline to Kitimat will change that somewhat. I agree that the supply is kept at just the right amount to force prices up, no different than the stock exchange though.
Who exactly are the regular working class consumer types who are getting shafted by these artifically high stock prices and how exactly are these poor suffering consumers suffering so much harm from these rigged prices. Stock prices are not based on supply or demand of a certain stock. You can always buy stock in any company or sell stock in any company. Stock prices are based on the perceived value of the company, basically, how well it is doing on the market.
Rigged prices are not too common in the US market because we have plenty of competition. There are constant price wars over many products in this country. As long as you have ferocious competition and no price-fixing, there will always be folks trying to undercut their competitors and sell cheaper.
PS artificially rigged high prices should be opposed by anyone who supposedly believes in capitalism, but in practice almost all US capitalists support this sort of thing. All they care about is profits. If oil company price-rigging results in greater profits, then the capitalists are for it. Most capitalists don’t even believe in a free market. They hate their competition. They all want to be an illegal monopoly in their industry.
PS Price fixing is illegal.
Perceived value of the company….hehe. I get your point about the supply / demand on stock.
Back to gouging, a few days before every long weekend / holiday we see gas prices jump up – demand is higher so we are told. But most of the product goes across the border. I guess a lot of US Citizens gas up for a road trip when the Canadian Holidays like Labour day and Thanksgiving ( ours is in October ) roll around. Who knew!
Price competition here is not like the US. Not near as many consumers. 34 Million across the whole Country, California alone has more. When Target moved up here last year we were told by execs “don’t expect US prices in our stores, it costs a lot to operate in Canada”. I guess Target just doesn’t have the clout to take a run at the other big dogs up here, struggling with bilingualism and the metric system really takes a toll on a business I guess. I remember when Eagle hardware showed up here about 20 years ago. Took less than 2 years before their competitors here made them crawl back home. We were a wild west back then. Now competition just means another corporate brand along the boulevard. I miss the mom and pop shops, fuck the franchises.
Pipeline frenzy underway in Canada.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/northern-gateway-is-not-alone-5-more-pipelines-to-watch-1.2678406
Looks like the Asian markets are more willing than our neighbors to the south.