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Old 8th Apr 2011, 12:35
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PPRuNe Towers
 
Join Date: Jan 1997
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G-Rich,

Like most you miss the oil industries dirty little secret - refining capacity.

1970's refineries worked at 75/76% capacity. Quarter of the plant was always available for short term spikes/maintenance/knocking to the ground and rebuilding or modernising.

Now, between bean counters, just in time processes, environmental laws, rulings, zoning and nimbyism no new capacity has been created in years and excess plant capacity worldwide has been small, single figure percentages.

There isn't anywhere left to process new or old fuels in industrial quantities irrespective of demand, irrespective of price. So one part of the oil industry is desperate for demand to drop just to give them a breather to take some fractioning units off line for maintenance and modernisation. There's a generation's worth of new design just been sitting on hold.

It's also worth thinking through the strategic implications of a natural disaster or terrorism hitting a major refining area. One way or another loads of oil but it's a heavily constricted and inherently weak supply chain.
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