asianflava wrote:What if they artifically decrease the supply by having "refinery problems". Enron made artificial power shortages which increased their bottom line.
Say for example: they have an explosion at a refinery and at the same time another comes online, the price will always increase because of the one that had the explosion. They won't say that that it due to the cost of repairing the broken one, they just say that they lost capacity even though it is at a similar level.
Ever since Enron, the SEC and other watchdogs closely monitor corporate activities. I'm not saying that big oil is doing that, but it just seems fishy to me.
Even if they're not trying to game the system, there's a lot of legitimate reasons that refineries can be off-line. Aside from shutdowns for routine maintenance, there are also shutdowns for retrofits, such as those required during capacity expansion, or for environmental/regulatory reasons. Examples in the environmental/regulatory field include modifications to the refinery to reduce emissions during refining, adding equipment to remove sulfur from fuel, additional equipment for government-mandated oxygenation and/or additives, etc.
