Asymmetrical Information

As far as I know, no one has come up with a way to control the two major pollution problems with refineries: they're ugly, and they smell.

Ugly? Ugly! You mean like this and this and this? Why, even this has a technological grandeur about it. Check out those pipes! Whereas this is an Amish barn.

Refineries do smell, though. I gotta give you that. Of course, so do the barns. I don't think those people would want real, smelly Amish barns in their neighborhoods either.

Angie, those are beautiful. (Once an engineer, always an engineer.)

A not-so-nitpicky point, as I've seen this in a few wire stories.

How could high crude prices be the result of limited refining capacity? Refineries, of course, are consumers of crude oil. If their consumption is limited by stickiness in capacity, wouldn't that actually force down the price of crude (while, to be sure, boosting prices for refined products)?

Yeah, Cole is pretty quick to ignore his tougher critics.

I wouldn't expect a mea culpa any time soon.

Strong refined products demand is keeping oil prices high than they have been, along with speculation about the future, due to war and other global uncertainties.

However, are these prices high? Ajusted for inflation, we still have a ways to go before we get even close to the prices seen in 1978.

I have to second Andrew's point here. I can see how a lack of refining capacity would make the price of *refined* products (like gasoline) high. But I'd think it would make the price of actual petroleum -- i.e. crude oil, the refineries' feedstock -- lower, because demand would be less.

And I also don't understand the logic behind saying the $5 billion California refinery would be unprofitable if oil prices dropped. As I understand it, refineries make their profit on the spread between the crude oil feedstock they buy and the refined products they sell. So to the extent crude oil prices fell, the refinery should be more profitable, all else being equal.

Am I missing something really obvious here? Cause this doesn't seem to make any sense whatsoever, and not just for the reasons Jane mentions.

There is no one "oil price". Lack of refining capacity pushes up the price of the light, sweet grades that most US and European media outlets benchmark--Brent crude or West Texas Intermediate. It pushes down the price of heavy, sour grades such as those that the Saudis produce.

DRB: Crack spreads...traded on the NYMEX. Generally, the prices of crude fall, the prices of unleaded gas, ethylene, heating oil, etc also fall. This is especially painful in capital-intensive, commodity businesses like the refining industry (or the merchant electricity industry). When processing spreads fall, the company is unable to recover their fixed (sunk) costs through the sale of product.

Traders set up strategies to hedge/speculate on these processing spreads. Other trades like this include smash spreads (soybeans vs soybean oil/soybean meal), spark spreads (electric power vs. gas) and spreads between pork bellies and corn/lean hogs on the Chicago Merc.

Last new refinery built in the US dates to 1977. Incidentally, last new power plant built in the Bay Area before the California power crisis dated to the early 1970s.

Jane, I acknowledge that the requirements of various refineries impact the relative price of different grades of oil. But we're not talking about WTI being at $70/bbl while Saudi crude is at $10/bbl. Today's Platt's Oilgram indicates that the differential between WTI and Saudi crude has widened from the long-term average of $3/bbl to $6.60/bbl in 2005. While that's interesting, it's hardly an explanation for the high petroleum prices we're seeing across all grades.

Holmes, agreed, which is why I used the words "all else equal." I agree that refined product prices tend to drop as feedstock prices drop because changes in the feedstock price are pushed through to the customer pretty rapidly in the refining business (much faster than, e.g. the chemical industry). But my original point stands: the refining business lives and dies on the spread over feedstock prices, not on the absolute level of feedstock prices. So Cole's comment on a drop in oil prices making refineries unprofitable still doesn't make sense to me. If anything, I would think building another refinery in the US as he suggests would just serve to decrease refinery spreads as the new capacity forces refiners to compete harder for customers.

Again, I could be missing something really obvious here. But Cole's comments don't make sense to me, beyond just what Jane has focused on.

DRB, I think Cole is mistaken in his economic analysis, as you do. I was explaining why the seemingly anomalous headline--"lack of refining capacity fuels rise in oil price"--that ran last week was not actually crazy.

Cole knows nothing serious about economics.

My employer sells maintenance items to refineries. Basically, the accounting cost of running an existing refinery, even with maintenance, is much less than it would be for a new refinery. Old refineries are fully depreciated, costs have been amortized, etc. So new refineries wouldn't present the profit margins that old ones do if oil prices start to slip.

Cole knows nothing serious about economics.

Sometimes I think Cole knows nothing serious about anything. Certainly he manages to screw up plentifully regarding even his areas of supposed expertise, though at times (like Krugman) he can be useful. But, also like Krugman, he prefers to spend most of his time spouting inanities about topics wildly beyond his scope of knowledge, driven by a transparent political agenda. Sorry, rant over.

Well, althought I think the assertion likely true, I stated it mostly with ironic intent, given Cole's use of the phrase "knew nothing serious" to defame a brave man who was recently murdered in Iraq. What I will say unironically is that Cole likely is an execrable human being.

One uncommented factor is that it is the people of California, New York, New Jersey, et. al. who, in the form of their national legislators, enact nationwide EPA laws that prevent us down in Texas and Lousiana from building more refineries, even if we know what they smell like. (They smell like money. They smell like prosperous blue collar workers with high school educations.)

And since we can't build any more, we have to run the ones we have flat-out. They blow up sometimes when you run them hard like that:
http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/metropolitan/3305611

I have to chuckle when most folks discount that all these issues have been planned for since the late 50's. The reason no more refineries are being built is not because of price or throughput...it is because supply is not going to increase. This obviates the need for any new plants and indeed increases the need for refurbishing aged sections of existing plants (ie more cost effective).

If the Big 4 of oil needed the additional refineries to boost end product and profits they would have been built long ago. Supply is not there, and all the blustering of the Saud's and others is smokescreen to cover the fact that they could not deliver on increase of supply that even their cooked books laughed at.
We have reached world wide peak or will shortly, and Saudi Arabia has nothing more to tap easily. Thats the reason for their ungainly attempt to shrug off the shortfall by claiming that the US is no longer their prime client... China is. And curiously the numbers promised were forgotten in the switch over.

Peanut? Shells? Deception? - Yep!

Without even the understanding of a B.A. in Middle Eastern history, most of us -- including most of Prof. Cole’s right-wing critics and me too – would lose badly if we tried to debate Cole in his field. I have a brilliant poli sci graduate student friend who can talk for hours about Middle Eastern history if you let him. Even with his patience for my many questions, I have trouble following his talk of Sunnis, Shiites, Kurds, the Baath party, Marsh Arabs, Turkish and Iranian interests, Sykes-Picot and whatnot . I doubt many of Cole’s critics understand much of what Cole says about the Middle East either.

What follows is the supposedly excreteable comment Cole made about Steven Vincent:
Vincent did not know anything serious about Middle Eastern culture and was aggressive about criticizing what he could see of it on the surface, and if he was behaving in the way the Telegraph article describes, he was acting in an extremely dangerous manner.

Here is a description of Vincent from Reuters:
Steven Vincent, art critic who went to war03 Aug 2005 16:32:34 GMTSource: Reuters
NEW YORK, Aug 3 (Reuters) - Free-lance journalist Steven Vincent, who was killed in southern Iraq this week, was an art critic inspired to write about war after watching from the roof of his New York apartment as the World Trade Center towers fell.

Note that by the time Vincent was “inspired to write” in late 2001, Cole had been studying the Middle East seriously for at least 25 years, assuming Cole studied it for at least two years to get his M.A. in the three year period after he got his B.A.. Cole received his M.A. in Arabic Studies from American University in Cairo in 1978. Unless Vincent grew up in the Middle East, it is likely that Vincent really was a cultural naïf who “did not know anything serious about Middle Eastern culture.” That statement is not invalidated whether or not it is rude to criticize a recently murdered man or whether Vincent was a “brave man”. I doubt Cole’s critics would be so vociferous if Cole wasn’t a lefty.

As for Cole’s economic expertise, a blogger can easily make a mistake outside his (or her) area of expertise. For instance,
“And we have a much, much higher percentage of immigrants than most other countries; immigrants, with their poor early health care and nutrition, die young.” -- Jane Galt in comments on April 8, 2004 07:39 AM

Although studies can be flawed, a search quickly yields:
All-Cause and Cause-Specific Mortality of Immigrants and Native Born in the United States
Gopal K. Singh, PhD, MS, MSc, and Mohammad Siahpush, PhD, MS

Objectives. This study examined whether US-born people and immigrants 25 years or older differ in their risks of all-cause and cause-specific mortality and whether these differentials, if they exist, vary according to age, sex, and race/ethnicity.

Methods. Using data from the National Longitudinal Mortality Study (1979-1989), we derived mortality risks of immigrants relative to those of US-born people by using a Cox regression model after adjusting for age, race/ethnicity, marital status, urban/rural residence, education, occupation, and family income.

Results. Immigrant men and women had, respectively, an 18% and 13% lower risk of overall mortality than their US-born counterparts. Reduced mortality risks were especially pronounced for younger and for Black and Hispanic immigrants. Immigrants showed significantly lower risks of mortality from cardiovascular diseases, lung and prostate cancer, chronic obstructive pulmonary diseases, cirrhosis, pneumonia and influenza, unintentional injuries, and suicide but higher risks of mortality from stomach and brain cancer and infectious diseases.

Is the above study flawed in some way?

Finally, here is Cole’s own well-reasoned defense of his criticism of Stephen Vincent:

I am reposting here with commentary my comments of 8 August about Colin Freeman's story in the Telegraph concerning the murder of art journalist Stephen Vincent in Basra. Below, I also reprint part of the Freeman article. I am clarifying my remarks because Vincent's widow is circulating a misleading characterization of them. I understand the grief of a bereaved widow, and I am not interested in arguing with her. But Vincent does not get a pass on being criticized simply because he is dead (the entire historical profession would collapse in this case). Most of her beefs seem to me to have to do with Mr. Freeman's article, which I referred to as part of the "news consolidation" aspect of this blog.

A recent, informed discussion of the case by David Enders, who is in Basra, makes many of the same points as I did.

The wingnuts are going crazy over this contretemps, which is what is really interesting. I think it is because Vincent is a symbol for the pro-War American Right. He was inspired to his journalism in Iraq by September 11. That was his first mistake. The poor Iraqis had nothing to do with September 11. He was a defender of the Bush administration policies in Iraq, and he was killed in the course of reporting on Shiite religious parties' and militias' influence in Basra. But that influence was a direct result of Coalition policies! The Bush administration appointed the leader of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI, a pro-Iranian Shiite party) to the Interim Governing Council, in July of 2003. The Bush administration decided to allow the Badr Corps militia (SCIRI's paramilitary) to operate as long as its members did not carry heavy weapons in public. How can the US Right then complain that SCIRI is taking over Basra? They already certified the legitimacy of SCIRI and the Badr Corps (both of which fielded candidates in the Jan. 30 elections, winning 9 of 11 provinces with substantial Shiite populations)! I think Vincent is such a controversial figure because he and his death can be read on the left as symbols for the failures of Bush administration policies in Iraq. For the Right, he is a sort of martyr, now beatified and beyond criticism.

So here is the commentary:

Was American journalist Steve Vincent killed in Basra as part of an honor killing? He was romantically involved with his Iraqi interpreter, who was shot 4 times.

Note that I did not say, as Mrs. Vincent assumes, that he was sleeping with his interpreter, Nur al-Khal. That he was romantically involved with her is obvious from his blog, where he calls her "Leyla". I don't have any interest in their personal lives per se, but this relationship may have had something to do with his death and so is fair game for mention.

'If her clan thought she was shaming them by appearing to be having an affair outside wedlock with an American male, they might well have decided to end it. In Mediterranean culture, a man's honor tends to be wrought up with his ability to protect his womenfolk from seduction by strange men. Where a woman of the family sleeps around, it brings enormous shame on her father, brothers and cousins, and it is not unknown for them to kill her. These sentiments and this sort of behavior tend to be rural and to hold among the uneducated, but are not unknown in urban areas.

Everything I have said here is true. Clueless Americans don't understand the principle of gender segregation for the most part, and if they do understand it they are horrified by it. But in large swathes of the world, it just is not considered right for a male to be in the company of an unrelated female. It isn't just a matter of sleeping around, as my wingnut correspondents assume. It is being alone in the company of an unrelated man or woman, and having that be known publicly. Male honor is invested in the protection of the virginity of female relatives, and a conviction that something improper may have occurred would be enough in some instances to cause a vendetta. It is not just a Muslim thing. Many Orthodox Jews and Middle Eastern and Balkan Christians feel the same way.

Clueless Americans don't understand gender segregation, and they don't understand clan honor as practiced in most Arab societies. We American men aren't dishonored in particular if our sisters sleep around, though I suppose in high school it can't be pleasant for a guy to have everyone taunt him that his sister is a slut. But in Arab culture, a brother can't show his face in public if his sister is known to be a slut. He is enraged by this loss of honor, and sometimes he will kill her to wipe out the shame. And, by the way, her father and male first cousins are also shamed, and might conspire in taking action to restore their honor.

It is in fact an extension of a general Greater Mediterranean (please read Fernand Braudel) ethos of honor and honor killings. Mostly we in the West know about the issue of furious husbands killing their wives for sleeping around. In many Mediterranean and Mediterranean-influenced societies (e.g. Latin America), such a "crime of honor" was not even typically punished by the courts in the past. The reason the husband behaves this way is not just, as many Americans imagine, insane jealousy. It is because he believes his honor has been irretrievably damaged.

There is a large literature on honor killings. Look up the phrase at amazon.com if you want to dip into it. The whole system of clans, clan honor, and the investment of male honor in the protection of the chastity of females may be horrific. But it is the norm in much of the world (it operates to some extent in parts of Africa, in South Asia and in Central Asia, as well). Not understanding and respecting it can get you killed when you are out there.

By the way, the US military in Iraq understands all this perfectly well, and has forbidden troops from fraternizing with Iraqi women, and has punished some who did. That is, if you asked a US officer in Iraq about this issue, he will tell you the same thing I have. So how can I be criticized for articulating it?

Finally, the politics of honor and the body of the woman has been inscribed on nationalist politics in the Middle East for decades. Colonialism and foreign conquest has been spoken of as a kind of rape. Having foreign troops in one's country fooling around with its women is seen as symbolic of the humiliation of imperial subjection. This theme is central to the novel Midaq Alley, by Nobel prize winning novelist Naguib Mahfouz. In the novel, a young Egyptian man kills his girlfriend for consorting with Western troops in Cairo during World War II. The incident is a symbol of Egyptian resentment at having been recolonized by Churchill during the war.

Vincent, as an American male going about in public and private with an unrelated Iraqi woman, put himself in the position of being seen as symbolizing this joint sexual and colonial humiliation. It may well have been part of the reason he was killed.

Some correspondents have said it was odd that Vincent was killed but Ms. al-Khal survived. Uh, you can't shoot someone 4 times without intending to kill the person. Her survival is welcome and piece of good fortune, but the intent of the shooters is obvious.

Vincent did not know anything serious about Middle Eastern culture

There are kinds of knowing. Vincent could not read a book about the Middle East written by a Middle Easterner in Arabic. He did not understand Shiite religious law. He saw the surface of things because he was there. He did not know their depths. How many of us would accept an art critic's claim to be an expert on French politics and culture when he could not read French literature and had only been in France off and on for 18 months? When the person could not read President Chirac's speeches in the original when reprinted in the press, could not read French literature or legal writings, and the extent of his knowledge of Catholicism was that he had attended some masses at the Notre Dame? Of course if he was in Paris when a riot occurred, he could describe what he saw, and could interview English-speaking French or use an interpreter to interview some rioters and politicians. He could write knowledgeably about the riot, and could add to our knowledge. But he wouldn't be a France expert.

and was aggressive about criticizing what he could see of it on the surface,

Read his blog.

' and if he was behaving in the way the Telegraph article describes, he was acting in an extremely dangerous manner. '

I.e. he was egregiously breaking the rules of gender segregation and female honor. He should have had a male interpreter.

His death was most unfortunate, and I felt it. He was a colleague of sorts. But he behaved foolishly and frankly ignorantly.

-------

The Telegraph
* Murder of US reporter in Iraq may be linked to marriage pledge
By Colin Freeman
(Filed: 07/08/2005)

British officials hunting the killers of an American journalist in Basra are investigating the possibility that he may have been targeted over his relationship with his Iraqi translator, whom he had pledged to marry.

Investigators believe that Steven Vincent, a freelance reporter who was abducted and shot last Tuesday, may have angered local religious hardliners with his conduct.

The interpreter, Nour Weidi, who was shot four times in the attack, has told investigators from her hospital bed that Mr Vincent planned to marry her so she could settle in the United States.

The investigation is being led by Iraqi police, with British and US officials playing a strong supervisory role.

Speculation over the murder initially focused on the possibility that Mr Vincent was killed after writing articles alleging that Basra's police had been infiltrated by Shia death squads.

The pair were abducted soon after midnight in central Basra. Mr Vincent's body was later found nearby with multiple bullet wounds.

The murder was unusual in that was no attempt was made by his attackers to hold him hostage or make political capital out of his nationality. No group has claimed responsibility, suggesting that terrorist involvement is unlikely, say investigators.

Staff at the Basra hotel where Mr Vincent had lived for three months say the couple's relationship had drawn disapproval and warnings of retribution. But investigators have not commented publicly on whether they think the relationship was sexual, and believe that the case has hidden complexities.

"There is a straight-line connection that people have drawn between Steven Vincent criticising the Iraq police and therefore being murdered," said one investigator.

"But from the evidence so far, including accounts we have had from the Iraqi interpreter, that is not the immediate conclusion we are drawing. It appears to be quite a complex case.

"There is the possibility that this was an attempted 'honour killing', related in some way to the relationship he had with his interpreter. But it does not fit the pattern of honour killings as it is usually the woman who dies."

Mr Vincent, 49, a former art critic who turned to journalism after witnessing the September 11 attacks, had been married to his American wife for 13 years. She is understood to have been aware of his plans to marry Ms Weidi for visa purposes.

Police are now examining Mr Vincent's articles and weblog to trace people he interviewed and wrote about.

He was not afraid to voice pro-US views or get into rows with locals. In one weblog entry, he describes a heated exchange with an Iraqi who looked disapprovingly at his translator because she was not wearing a headscarf.

He seemed relaxed about his personal security. He had no bodyguards, travelled in taxis and made no secret of his disapproval of local Iran-backed Shia militias.

In an opinion piece published in the New York Times the day before his murder, he alleged the existence of a "death car", a white Toyota full of off-duty police who killed political opponents. He also claimed to have received death threats and to have unearthed political scandals.'

M Strowbridge.

With all due respect, get a blog. That way, it will be your posts that go unread because of their length - not your comments.

By the way, here is a great quote from Cole on the Vincent killing:

"Male honor is invested in the protection of the virginity of female relatives, and a conviction that something improper may have occurred would be enough in some instances to cause a vendetta. It is not just a Muslim thing. Many Orthodox Jews and Middle Eastern and Balkan Christians feel the same way."

Yes, all of those Orthodox Jewish honor killings have just gone unreported by the Zionist-controlled media.

With all due respect, get a blog.

Better yet, learn to link, instead of cutting and pasting from Juan Cole's blog.

Is the above study flawed in some way?

Not that I can see, but it controlled for sociodemographic characteristics, which speaks to a different point than the one Jane was making. Poor immigrant minorities may be healthier than poor native-born minorities, but that doesn't tell us whether they're healthier than the US population as a whole.

Mr. Stowbridge, without getting into Cole's knowledge or lack thereof regarding the things he writes about, simple courtesy demands that one refrain from making disparaging remarks about the knowledge, or lack thereof, of recent murder victims. Imagine, in the early 1960s, a University professor, writing of the recent murder of two northern civil rights workers, stating that they "knew nothing serious about white working class male Southern culture". Such a statement is hideous on many levels, including the implication that white working class Southern males are murderous thugs as a group, but, more basically, it is a hurtful thing to say in the wake of people being murdered.

That this needs be explained makes one wonder what sort of execrable human being you are.

And "excretable".

I don't usually point out spelling errors in comments, but that one was too good to pass up. (par. 2 of M Stowbridge's magnum opus)

The refinery issue is strictly a red herring.
Yes, no new refinery have been built in years.
But if you look at the capacity data you see that the existing refineries have been rebuilt in place and that refinery capacity has been growing 2-3% every year, or roughly about the same growth rate as demand.

The refinery business has been a very low return business for years and the industry has undergone a steady consolidation. This is typically what happens in an industry with excess capacity. Just within the last year or so has refinery capacity utilization risen to the point where they can earn a decent profit.

Yes, regulations have played a role in the lack of refinery growth, but it has been very, very minor.

"In Mediterranean culture, a man's honor tends to be wrought up with his ability to protect his womenfolk from seduction by strange men."

What I find most striking is Cole's use of the terms 'protect' and 'honor'. They're 'protecting' their womenfolk from seduction by murdering them?

Well, you must admit -- if you kill a woman she can't cheat on you!

To get really precise about refineries and sweet and sour (or sulfurous) crude, we should say some (older) refineries absolutely cannot refine sour crude. The metal alloys in their piping, pressure vessels, etc. would be destroyed by it. The other refieneries can refine sour crude at various levels of "sourness."

There are a number of refineries in the US that can handle sour crude, Valero operates a big one in Corpus Christi, Texas.

Stowbridge, when you say somebody was 'romantically involved' that means they were sleeping together. I do not think Cole so ignorant of the English language that he did not know this. The insinuation was deliberate. Notice that the Telegraph article you quote does not say anything about romantic involvements, in fact says that the interpreter planned to marry for visa purposes. In other words Cole made this story up to insult an innocent murdered man and his grieving widow and after being challenged by the widow still refuses to apologize. I don't know what is worse, his conduct to the widow or his insinuation that women who offend Middle Eastern standards of machismo deserve to be killed. Anyway Cole is clearly a contemptible little reptile and so is anybody who tries to make excuses for him.

This point was made by another, but would Cole and others explain away the lynching of a black man and his his white female guide by the KKK as an understandable reaction to the two having been seen in public?

"Yikes! Thought I. That's a big story!"

Yikes! also was my first thought and believing this would cripple Iraq wondered why I saw nothing further on the event....

Thanks for clearing that up for me.

I hate when I snort coffee... The statement, "Can't California do one of those fancy referendum items instructing the state to build a refinery?" was absolutely the FIRST time I've ever heard anyone suggest that Big Oil is unwilling further to desecrate California's unparallelled natural beauty and endanger her fragile environment, and therefore Californians should force them to do so.

I have GOT to forward this to my husband, an oil finance guy. With "put down your coffee" in the Subject line.

On Cole's ivory-tower admonishments of poor dead Stephen Vincent before his body is even cold, the professor may be a scholarly expert on the Middle East (albeit with a decided and obvious bias on the subject). He might be able to walk the streets of Baghdad without fear of committing an offense because he's so intimately familiar with local custom - he might, though I wonder how much "ground truth" he's experienced. He may believe that the cultural relativism to which his trumpeted understanding of Middle Eastern culture has led him is necessary and right (which is where he and Vincent would certainly differ). But he is an insensitive boor, undoubtedly.

the form of their national legislators, enact nationwide EPA laws that prevent us down in Texas and Lousiana from building more refineries... Well, refineries keep getting shut down for economic reasons rather than regulatory ones. Take a look sometime at the refineries getting shut down. Like the Bakersfield, CA refinery, who refines mostly San Joaquin valley crude, a region that has a couple hundred new wells drilled each year, and 20-25 more years of oil production. No, no, the "regulatory" issue is a total red-herring. Several refineries get shut each year to preserve profits. Frequently people try to purchase the ones getting shut down, and they are repeatedly told that they are "not for sale."

Several refineries catch fire each year. We've only been building refineries for just over a hundred years, so I guess that is reasonable for an immature technology. We've been building dams and bridges for over 2000 years, and some of those fail each year.

The book Normal Accidents covers technological accidents. I disagree with some of his premises (that some technologies are so accident prone that the dangers of them outweigh any possible benefit), yet I think it is a good book for looking at what sort of accidents do happen, and what we can do to minimize them.

...excreteable ... Perhaps that is his way of saying it is poop rather than fart/hot air? I think it is a reasonable malapropism.

They're 'protecting' their womenfolk from seduction by murdering them? Similar mentality to shooting your wife because you caught her in bed with another man.

As I said on Murdoc's blog, relying on home-grown "expertise" in the study of a foreign culture is all well and good, if your group includes no authentic members of that culture to query.

If I had combined degrees in feminist studies, women's studies, and gynecology, I would certainly be the "female expert" in the boys' locker room, but in truth I'd still know less about being female than over half the people on the planet.

Similarly, Cole's knowledge of on-the-ground Basra culture would be trumped by Nooriya's, or to put it crudely, Muhammed's down at the Quicky-Mart. I say "Basra culture" because Cole's description of the area as a "Meditarranean culture is geographically absurd". London and Birmingham are closer to the Med than Basra (which is found about 750 miles east of the med). The people there have roots among the Assyrians, Hitites, Sumerians, and Arabs from Arabia, not from north Africa, Spain, Southern France, Italy, Montenegro, Anatolia, Greece, Siciliy, Lebanon, Israel, etc.

He's reached the absurd conclusion that Lisa Ramaci-Vincent, who actually comes from a Meditarranean culture, is too dumb to understand the social mores of the "Meditarranean culture" of Basra, where the people have never been remotely close to the Meditarranean.

I want to agree with the first commenter. To an engineer, refineries are a thing of beauty. Living and working where I do in Houston, I can admire the Phillips, Exxon Mobil, and Shell (really a magnificent plant, especially with the regeneration turbines that have replaced the belching cooling towers).

My understanding of the economics is that building new refineries is not an issue, particularly in the US. As mentioned previously, supply of crude just isn't there, that's why crude is high not just the refined product.

China is having refined fuel shortages (a clear sign that supply is not meeting demand). They get most of their supplies from the heavy Middle East crude, so it is more difficult for them to refine. So maybe China needs a new refinery, but not the US.

Instead of building refineries, we ought to build alternative fuel power plants. As the price of oil increases, most alternatives become very viable, from wind power to nuclear power. Also, there are a few more refineries and plants that could follow Shell in getting rid of cooling towers by using regeneration turbines. They don't need regulation, because again, as the cost of fuel goes up, so do operating costs, and it becomes more economical for those plants to provide some of their own power from regeneration.

Question to the engineers in the group: at what point does the old technology in refineries built in the '70s become obsolete technology? Have there been refining breakthroughs since then that would significantly change refinery design, for instance? Or output? Or safety? Certainly I understand the line of thought that old refineries can be updated and that it's still cheaper to do so than to build new ones - but is there an inflection point, so to speak, at which updating is no longer cost-effective, or perhaps even possible?

ISTM that engineering works tend eventually to become obsolete and must be replaced. Model T's: you can still run one, but it's mighty hard to find the tires, for instance. VCRs: no sense in repairing one any more when you can buy a replacement DVD player that probably costs less than you paid for the VCR. Cellphones: well, as I said, you get my drift. IfurtherSTM that no matter how reluctant Big Oil may be to take on the huge capital outlay of a new refinery, they know it's coming and have been preparing for it. (That's hardly the only big capital payout Big Oil ever has to deal with. I'm finding rental costs for mud-rotary drilling rigs ranging from $24,000/day for an offshore rig [which I presume means one on a fixed platform when all you want to do is directionally drill a new well from that spot] to $100,000/day or more, which jibes with my memory from 1991 - and I sat many a natural gas well as a mudlogger in the Sacramento Valley over about 9 months and never ran production casing on a single one.) The question is, when do they anticipate there's no more update or repair possible? And what happens in California, for instance, when that day comes and California's gotten so used to not having to permit a giant machine that they've come to believe they'll never have to do it again?

It should also be observed (IIRC) that the marriage-for-visa HAD THE FAMILIES' APPROVAL. Both Vincent's wife and Ms Weidi's folks were on board. So if this is an honor killing...whose honor?

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