Originally Posted by
SideStickMonkey
That’s like 3 questions. Obviously there was money in refining or else they never would have been built in the first place. Shell and Exxon didn’t build refineries out the kindness of their hearts in the first place.
But oil was really cheap then, it didn’t cut into their bottom line. Oil isn’t as cheap anymore. And like good capitalists, gotta turn a better profit then the previous quarter or the executives don’t get their bonus.
It’s another Ponzi scheme. Eventually producing crude won’t matter if we can’t turn it into something useful.
You seem to think greed is a four letter word. It’s not. Greed has its limits.
Today, national and state legislation mandates refineries to meet stringent air and water cleanliness standards. In fact, oil companies in the U.S. believe obtaining a permit to build a modern refinery to be so difficult and costly that no new refineries were built (though many have been expanded) in the U.S. from 1976 until 2014, when the small Dakota Prairie Refinery in North Dakota began operation. Oil refining requires a LOT of resources.
No refineries were built because the capex is very high, permit and building very timing consuming, and possibility of low return on capital due to politics very high. An investor could just their money in Apple and sleep well at night. Or Monster Beverage