Interesting Links on Oil Refinery Profits

Via commenter Uncle Milton, a fine writer in his own right, we get a few links about oil refinery profits. They were doing great a year ago, but this year, things may not be looking so good. The much-blathered about talking point about no new refineries in the US in 30 years is true, but it's because the oil companies refuse to add new refineries, as the more refineries out there, the more prices go down.

So the supply of refineries is automatically being limited by a collusion of capitalists in order to keep prices artificially high. Some free market! Free markets only work in theory. This is something that freemarketeer liars - assholes never seem to figure out.

Capitalists will always collude, price fix, seek government bailout for their losses, seek to have the public pay for the costs of their enterprises, use the state make laws to screw the public, and plot to become monopolies, meanwhile screaming about monopolies once their competitors become one.

That's in addition to the lying, cheating and just general criminal behavior that any business or especially collection of businesses engages with the same regularity and quotidian mindset that the rest of us sit down to our meals.

That's my main beef against capitalists, they lie like rugs and steal more than Gypsies. They even kill people. All this, and in a society under corporate Gramscian hegemony like ours, and no one gives a fuck. As Nader says, they are "thinking corporate".

Chart showing the relative breakdown of the cost of a gallon of gasoline by refineries, distribution and marketing, taxes and crude prices. As I have stated in several recent posts, the present pricing is a feature of speculation in the crude oil bourses.

It generally doesn't have anything to do with conspiracies by oil companies costs or any of that. You can also see that in recent days with skyrocketing crude prices, not only do taxes take much less of a relative bite, but refinery profits are eating it too.

Make of these links what you will.

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