WorldNutDaily: Big Oil's Secret Strategy To Gush Profits Exposed

[Strelnikov_]

Yes, Brothers and Sisters, WorldNutDaily. The article makes the case that the lack of refinery capacity is due to a conspiracy by refiners to reduce capacity to just under full utilization. Not environmentalists. Not liberals.

Look at the line I have highlighted in bold.

I think Katrina has thrown us all down the rabbit hole.

Big Oil's Secret Strategy To Gush Profits Exposed
By Joe Kovacs
WorldNutDaily
September 8, 2005

http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=46209

. . .

A consumer group is publicizing a series of memos marked "highly confidential" alleging major oil companies – including Mobil, Chevron and Texaco – intentionally limited their refining capacity in order to raise gasoline prices and increase profits.

. . .

The Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights released three memos that purportedly demonstrate a nationwide effort by the American Petroleum Institute to encourage major refiners to close refineries in the 1990s.

. . .

FTRC says the Mobil memorandum from 1996 evinces the company's successful plan to keep smaller refiner Powerine from reopening its California refinery. It notes much of the hardships created by California's refinery rules came at the urging of the major oil companies, not the environmental groups blamed by the industry. The other alternative plan discussed in the event Powerine did open the refinery was "... buying all their avails and marketing it ourselves" to insure the lower price fuel didn't get into the market.

[wakeme2008]

1. Scary that WND would print

what the oil companies were doing...

BUT I will point out, Bush was the Governor of Texas to many of these years, and IF the oil companies had wanted a new refinery, he would have seen that it got built.

[Viking12]

2. Old news...

but worthwhile to keep in the public eye.

Senator Wyden exposed this 4 years ago...

http://wyden.senate.gov/leg_issues/reports/wyden_oil_report.pdf (pdf)