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| AP analysis: Firms crimping oil supplies |
| 2006-11-26 |
| A long hodge-podge article representing AP analysis of the domestic awl biz. You'd think it was Texas. Dusty roads course the scrubland toward oil tanks and warehouses. Beefy men talk oil over burritos at lunch. Like grazing herds, oil wells dip nonstop amid the tumbleweed - or even into the asphalt of a parking lot. That's why the rumor sounded so wrong here in California's lower San Joaquin Valley, where petroleum has gushed up more riches than the whole gold rush. Why would Shell Oil Co. simply close its Bakersfield refinery? Why scrap a profit maker? |
| Posted by:.com |
| #7 If their statistics are true and there have been less wells drilled in the past few years than the period before, there are several good reasons why. 1) Drilling costs have gone up faster than oil prices, so wells are less economic to invest in than in the past (true.) 2) There are fewer prospects to drill now, since some were drilled in the intervening years, but new ones are not created (just identified.) 3) Improved technology allows us to drill fewer (though more costly) wells to develop the same oil prospects. AP 'analysis' is incomplete, at best, again. |
| Posted by: Glenmore 2006-11-26 20:57 |
| #6 An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge... |
| Posted by: .com 2006-11-26 15:24 |
| #5 that Ambrose Bierce thingy The one about the haunted house on Vine Street in Cincinnati? Creeped me out the first time. Doesn't stand up to re-reading. Heck, most of his stuff just seems to be missing something; probably because the assumptions about what's frightening are so different now. |
| Posted by: Robert Crawford 2006-11-26 15:20 |
| #4 Yep, I am sooo there, Ship. An Ocurrence at Owl Creek Bridge proves everything you could possibly wanna prove. |
| Posted by: .com 2006-11-26 13:58 |
| #3 How about all the Carribean basin awl the Bush family is going to get because of the OWG thing? Huh? Answer me that! And the 131 supertankers full of Ethel circling around the Bermuda quadrangle? And crop circles, don't forget them, and flight 880, |
| Posted by: Shipman 2006-11-26 13:52 |
| #2 This stew of distortion and economic illiteracy is breath-taking, even by AP standards. Red meat for the most embarrassingly stupid commonly held idiot idea is America: the evil oil companies are squeezing us! Don't have time, and don't know where to begin. Just a few gems. Imagine an industry making its own investment decisions? My god! Where will it stop? (oh, right, EVERY industry does that, sorry) What could possibly be the barrier to entry to buidling refineries? Why don't us R'burgers just pool our resources and build some, to address the demand out there that evil Big Oil is manipulating? Oh - right. Regulatory and environmental barriers are, uh, almost insuperable. Oops. And on, and on ..... This is one area where Americans are not much more sophisticated than uneducated Arab or African masses - the worship of Big Oil evil as a concept is almost animist at times. |
| Posted by: Verlaine 2006-11-26 13:27 |
| #1 So they story is that Shell sold a refinery they didn't want -- because they had bigger refineries in the same region -- to another company. Lots a speculation built around a weak core. |
| Posted by: Robert Crawford 2006-11-26 12:11 |