List of Refineries That Have Shut Down, More to Come -- Not About The Bakken

Updates

Later: a reader send me the link to an analysis by the US EIA of the potential impact of the shutdown of the three refineries in the Philadelphia area. This is the link: http://www.eia.gov/analysis/petroleum/nerefining/update/pdf/neprodmkts.pdf.

A long comment below also summarizes some of the high points of the article. Neither the EIA report nor the comment mentioned anything about the lost jobs. 

Oil and Gas Journal has a story on this EIA analysis. 

Original Post

List here.

Meanwhile, elsewhere:

The U.S. Congress' Joint Economic Committee will hold a hearing in April on the potential consumer impact of the shutdown of oil refineries, including three refineries in the Philadelphia area that represent half the refining capacity in the Northeast.

"Rising gas prices coupled with decreasing refining capacity on the East Coast raise serious questions about our ability to ensure an adequate supply of affordable fuel for American consumers," said U.S. Sen. Bob Casey (D., Pa.), the chairman. The hearing will be held at 2:15 p.m. April 26.

Maybe it's just me, but shutting down three refineries that represent HALF the refining capacity in the northeast suggests that the US has way too much refining capacity or .... nah, it must just be me.

The three under consideration for closing:

• Marcus Hook refinery: Pennsylvania; mostly Nigerian oil, some Bakken oil
• Trainer refinery: Philadelphia; light, low-sulfur, Canadian, West Africa (Nigeria?), and North Africa (would that be Libya?)
• Philadelphia refinery:  like Marcus hook, mostly Nigerian oil and some Bakken oil.

(I wonder if the administration has given any thought to nationalizing or buying these refineries, sort of like buying GM?)

Fewer refineries for Bakken oil? Short term pressure on Bakken pricing.

Shutting down refineries just as US goes into peak driving season. I guess that's an energy policy. Not one I would opt for, but an energy policy, nonetheless, I guess.

Oh, as long as I'm on the subject. These three Philadelphia-area refineries must have been completely automated, run by robots. I've not heard any concern about impact on jobs.

Next story: global oil supplies stretched by Chinese demand. And so it goes.

A Note to the Grandaughers

About a year ago my wife cut out a clipping from the Boston Globe Sunday magazine on Mt Auburn Cemetery, Cambridge, Massachusetts. The clipping included a full-page, color map of the cemetery. As mentioned earlier, my older granddaughter and I went birding there last Wednesday. The map came in quite handy. The cemetery is way too big to cover in one day. It was not a great day for birding; I thought it was too cool, but now I've learned the real reason. More on that in a moment. But we had a great day learning to recognize trees, or at least start learning to recognize trees. It will now be a lot easier when the leaves come out.

Now back to birding. Yesterday there was a long article in the Boston Globe on birding at Mt Auburn Cemetery.

Mount Auburn was founded in 1831 as the country’s first garden cemetery, a place of respite with rolling hills, ponds, flowering shrubs, and a mix of broad-branched trees that provided shade not only for those in mourning, but also for the public visiting with a picnic lunch. It would be such a success that it laid the groundwork for Frederick Law Olmsted to create the Emerald Necklace a half-century later.

Today, more than 200,000 visitors enter the gates of Mount Auburn annually. Sure, they might come to visit the final resting spot of a relative or to pay their respects to one from a long list of luminaries in American arts and letters such as Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Winslow Homer, and Buckminster Fuller. Others like me follow in the footsteps of Roger Tory Peterson, the renowned 20th-century ornithologist who once led bird walking tours here in search of warblers, whom he called the “butterflies of the bird world.’’

.... As if on cue, a red-tailed hawk flew overhead, while to our left, a vibrant Baltimore oriole sat on a branch, twig in beak.

.... the orioles, scarlet tanagers, vireos, and the queen of neotropical migrants, the warbler, that had coaxed us to leave our pillows and arrive at this birding hot spot. Wintering in the Caribbean, Mexico, Central America, even South America, these enticing songbirds make their way north to New England and Canada to breed in the summer months. Mass Audubon schedules most of its spring walks at Mount Auburn the first two weeks of May, when the warbler migration reaches its peak.

So, my older granddaughter and I have a date to visit Mt Auburn during the first two weeks in May. I can hardly wait.

This morning on the way to school, the younger granddaughter, age 5, and I played 20 questions, "animal, plant, or mineral." She drives me nuts with that game. We have to play it every day on the way to school. Today, her winner was the "red-tailed hawk."

Sometime ago, when playing the same game, the older granddaughter's "animal, plant, or mineral" was oil. I was unable to guess it in 20 questions. Go figure.