Sunoco to sell refineries

[xchrom]

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_SUNOCO_REFINING?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2011-09-06-09-45-15

NEW YORK (AP) -- Sunoco Inc. said Tuesday it's getting out of the refining business.

The Philadelphia company, which owns two refineries in Pennsylvania, announced plans to sell those refineries and focus on its pipelines and retail gas stations that provide a steadier cash flow.

"We have made progress in increasing the efficiency of our refineries over the last several years, but given the unacceptable financial performance of these assets, it is clear that it is in the best interests of shareholders to exit this business," Lynn Elsenhans, Sunoco's chairman and CEO, said in a statement.

Sunoco's refineries in Philadelphia and Marcus Hook, Pa., can process a combined 505,000 barrels of oil per day. If it cannot sell its refineries, the company will shut down its main processing units in July 2012.

[krispos42]

1. "unacceptable financial performance of these assets"

:puke:

[xchrom]

2. i know, huh? very strange language. nt

[krispos42]

4. Oh, those poor refineries

Crude oil costs about 2 bucks a gallon. It gets processed and sold for 4 bucks a gallon as motor fuel. Not to mention all the nice fertilizers and plastics they get to make from it.


And I've been led to believe that the demand for gasoline in America is pretty much static and inflexible, not widely variable like, say, consumer electronics. So what's the problem?

[Arctic Dave]

3. ie. Can't gouge enough.

[leveymg]

5. There's a glut of crude on the market, so they'll have to shortage refined products.

Supply and demand. You want the price to rise, and can't increase demand, cut back on supply. Simple enough, I guess. The oil majors did it at the end of the Carter Administration as well to create to phony "Iran Oil Crisis," which was a shortage of retail gasoline released to market not crude oil stocks on hand inside the US, which were higher than previous years.

[kristopher]

6. They've had trouble there with fire and hurricane Irene...

In Philadelphia, a 90,000 bpd crude unit at Sunoco Inc's (SUN.N) Girard
Point section of its 335,000 bpd refinery was shut down Sunday due to flooding
from Hurricane Irene, a source familiar with refinery operations said.
The crude charge pumps for the unit were flooded and went down.
Rates to the 90,000 bpd gasoline-making fluid catalytic cracker at Girard
Point were cut to around 40,000 bpd. It wasn't yet clear how long the pump
system would take to repair.
The crude unit at the Point Breeze section of Sunoco's Philadelphia
refinery remained down after a fire there last week.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/08/30/storm-irene-refining-idUSN1E77T0XY20110830


Their real estate ad:
http://www.sunocoinc.com/Site/Consumer/RealEstate/RefineryProperties.htm