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Remember during the Bush administration when everyone was talking about getting off the Middle East oil teat and building more refineries in the US? Whatever happened to that? I never hear about new US refineries, anymore.
Was reading about how the oil companies are hiring like crazy but don't get people for some good paying jobs that require specific skills. Imagine that if you have a commercial driver's license you might start in a job that pays up to $85,000 plus benefits and that it's a salaried position, not a paid per load position. And, you don't need a college degree to do it. Anyway, there are all kinds of good oil-related jobs available in Texas according to this Yahoo article that has some personal stories.
"More than 500 men and women flocked to the hotel in Odessa, Texas, on a Thursday last month to be courted by Halliburton, which needs people to handle everything from oilfield technicians to truck drivers, as oil production booms and qualified workers become more scarce. The U.S. unemployment rate is 3.9 percent, just off an 18-year low, but job growth has slowed more recently - notably because companies are having trouble finding people. That is particularly true in the oilfields of West Texas, where workers from local towns like Midland and Odessa have flocked to the oil industry for higher pay...Halliburton, the second largest provider of oilfield services after Schlumberger, is adding more than 175 jobs a month, hiring executives say."
Reading this story made me think that this may be why the US unemployment number for non-high school graduates is going down. Not only do they qualify for some jobs not requiring a college degree but they may be filling the jobs people leave as they move up to higher paying ones like a guy in the article who has a Walmart stocking job, but hopes to find an oil job providing cementing services for wells.
Still, it got me to thinking. When are we going to build those new oil refineries politicians and others talked about for more than a decade? It's got to be a job maker in construction, right?
We don't need new refineries. We can buy gasoline on every corner in America.
I do remember the conversations years ago, but the same thing was true then; we just don't need them. There are 137 refineries in the US and they run at about 90% capacity.
We use 385 million gallons/day. The all time high was 390 million/day in 2007. Full capacity would be around 420 million/day.
BTW: I ran into one of those refinery drivers a couple of months ago. I cannot recall when I met anyone happier with his job. He had to make 3 round trips a day, and they didn't care when he did it. He logs in and does his runs and goes home - sometime early, sometimes later, and sometimes he splits it and runs errands or takes a nap or whatever.
Most of the USA Petroleum Refineries are build near the Coast for easy transport - the largest are along the Gulf Coast. They are not easy to build, which is why most of them are old. "Refinery Jobs" are often Oil Service jobs and not really at a refinery that processes the petroleum and then "refines" it into different components used in 1,000's of products .... including anything made of plastic. I doubt any new refinery was even proposed, much less approved during the Obama Era - Lisa Jackson (EPA) did everything she could to shut down refineries or milk them with fines of some sort.
LNG facilities are a big wave of the future and they are working fast to try and bring more LNG facilities on line and build shipping stations.
I doubt any new refinery was even proposed, much less approved during the Obama Era - Lisa Jackson (EPA) did everything she could to shut down refineries or milk them with fines of some sort.
Excess capacity. It doesn't take too much math to figure out that if:
1. Most power plants have switched to Nat Gas (many were oil)
2. Cars get 2X the mileage (some more!) than a decade or two ago.
3. Newer or updated refineries are more productive and efficient....
4. Many industrial processes have moved to electric or nat gas.
5. Most residential heating has moved to nat gas.
So, pray tell, what does everyone want to do with all the extra oil? Burn it in smudge pots?
LNG facilities are a big wave of the future and they are working fast to try and bring more LNG facilities on line and build shipping stations.
Yeah, not a good thing. Basically it means fracking every couple 100 feet in thousands of square miles to get at small amounts of gas - polluting air and ground water...and then taking the results and shipping them overseas.
Even the companies doing this are losing money. So it's a lose-lose-lose.
Here is the story of just one of those companies....polluting our world, breaking laws....and, oh, the CEO is deal. Probably did it himself.
We don't need new refineries..... There are 137 refineries in the US and they run at about 90% capacity.
But yet every spring/fall fuel prices go up while the refineries switch over to the summer/winter blends. Seems like poor planning on their part. Why not stagger the change-over so as to not cause a disruption to the consumer? And heaven forbid a hurricane hits the Gulf and shuts down a few of them; prices are guaranteed to spike for weeks.
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