They had a fire at a refinery in Ontario Canada about a month ago. The price of gasoline went from $0.74/litre to $1.00/litre (about $1.03 per American gallon increase). Now, I don't know what the cost of the fire was to Esso, but the higher cost due to shortages netted Esso, Shell and Petro Canada about $110 million extra over the course of 3.5 weeks. This was while the world price for crude was stable at around $58/barrel. Not bad.....They should start more fires!
The Ontario Esso refinery fire = gold mine
Mar 16, 2007
1 Replies
Same sort of thing happened in the USA when BP let a pipeline in Alaska to rust out. Must be nice to be rewarded for one's own incompetence... .then again maybe it's a plan of ready made excuses to cut supply and profit.
In other industries, where there is a real free market, if your plant blows up or is otherwise knocked off line, it can mean going out of business.
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