Moratorium on Refinery Closures Needed....

Hurricane Katrina should have hard lessons...
In the wake of the hurricanes that struck the refining centers on the coastal areas of the Gulf of Mexico last September,the consumer was left at the whim of the mercantile exchanges in North America.
For more than a few days,consumers paid through the hilt for petroleum products that we came to be dependent upon in our daily lives.
Maybe we're complacent?...
Fact of the matter was that,with ever increasing demand,we were left "shortchanged" for something we came to need on a daily basis.
Why?...
In the recent past,especially in Canada,policies more commonly known as "reciprocal sales arrangements" allowed for the sharing of inventory between companies and that,in itself,allowed for the closure of refineries.Companies didn't have to have a refinery in it's company operations if it were found that supply could be acquired elsewhere.In this case,it was off the company it was supposed to be competing against!
Seems odd doesn't it?...
The latest refinery closure in Canada was a facility in Sarnia,Ontario where,according to the release at the time,it was too expensive to change the refinery to something a little more environmentally friendly and,as a result,some 300,000 barrels a day of "capacity" was removed from the North American and Canadian markets...
Right!....

I can think of several refineries in Atlantic Canada that have shut their doors and packed up and moved to the Middle East,closer to their sources of supply,Dartmouth's Ultramar facility and the old "Golden Eagle" facility in Holyrood Newfoundland and Labrador to name two...

That's just in Canada...

While it may be argued that refiner margins were very low in the late 90's and into the 2000 years,it also had to be argued that refining isn't the only branch that consists of the makings of an oil company.An oil company encompasses everything from the exploration end of the industry down to the sale at the pump and the industry has long forgotten it's responsibility to compete let alone support what it entered into in the first place.

The hard,object lesson of the hurricane season should be dire warning that governments on both a federal and state/provincial level should both place a moratorium on any refinery closures in the future and also that it should pursue the construction of new refineries close to their sources of supply.

Be it on the Grand Banks of Newfoundland and Labrador,Sable Island resources off Nova Scotia or the vast resources of crude oil in Alaska,not a drop of crude oil should sail for the hurricane ravaged refining areas until Big Oil recognizes the tenuous situation it has put the consumer into.

Secondary processing is a must and Big Oil needs to move from the Gulf of Mexico...

It's something I've been calling for now for a long time and,now with the advent of "Hurricane Syndrome" on the markets of the New York Mercantile Exchange raging already this spring,it's something finally being thought about by the people looking after the resources on behalf of their people.

After all,it's about time isn't it?...