Quote:
Originally Posted by Flames in 07
when you are In a turnaround, and can't produce, how much money are you printing?
Hint 1: volume times margin
Hint 2 : your volume is zero.
It's a dumb idea because the government would be awful at competing properly with private enterprise. Canada is riddled with very large scale examples of this. I don't know specifically why, but if nobody is building, it's probably a bad idea.
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But is their volume really zero?
The BP Whiting Refinery in northern Indiana shut down the largest of three crude distillation units Saturday for what the company in a statement called "unscheduled repair work."
It looks like they're still producing, albeit at reduced capacity. I think back to the rolling brownouts California had back in 2000-01. Later it was found out that the power stations did have enough power to supply all of California, but they purposely decreased power output, so they could raise the prices.
As for your other point, I don't think people get upset when the price of a hockey ticket goes up for a certain game, or hotel prices go up during a certain season, because demand is high and supply is low. For me at least, it looks like the refineries are purposely decreasing supply to drive up the prices.