Valero
Charlie Copeland thinks a choice was made today, by the Markell Administration or Democrats in general:
Does anyone honestly expect high-paying, green jobs to magically appear in Delaware to replace Valero anytime in the next decade? This isn’t a game, it is real lives in the balance, and we’ve shoved them out the door.
Prince Charlie laments that we have made operating the refinery tough for those poor poor Valero owners for years, what with our ridiculous pollution control regulations. Prince Charlie is setting up a nice strawman hoping you would ignore the fact that he just requested that the state prop up a business. Isn’t that what he and his ilk on the right decry? Isn’t that socialism?
Valero closed today due to capitalism in action. The owners of Valero were losing money in operating the plant because demand for gas was low. Thus, by closing the plant, they hope to squeeze supply so as to make gas prices rise. And when gas prices do rise, we hear excuses from the oil and gas industry that if only we had more refinery capacity in this country, then there would be more supply and thus there would be lower prices!!!
So a choice was made today, but it was by Valero. They want to see their profits rise at the expense of their workers, 550 of them who just lost their jobs, and at the expense of everyone else, who will now have to pay higher prices for gasoline. Remember who was responsible for that choice? Valero. And remember who supports the oil industry without question? Republicans. Including Prince Charlie. I am sure Prince Charlie will be able to afford the higher gas prices.
DD – yes, demand certainly was a part of it and I agree with that. It was also a moneypit of a facility with problems that plagued it since it was hurried to completion years ago. Even in “good” times for that business, that plant was a money-loser. I am very surprised it lasted as long as it did with the problems it presented. So, no offense, but to blame capitalism as you did is a tad opportunistic to shift blame that truly is distributed, but instead heap it onto one spot.
Let’s leave the environmental imapct alone for now. That can come in the following months when the discussion shifts to what will be done with it.
Notice how the price of oil continues too rise despite slack demand and hefty reserves on hand. The effects of Speculation are obvious, the price is still not governed by the famed law of Supply and Demand as dreams of $150 a barrell for crude dance in thier uber greedy little heads. Blame not just Prince Charlie but his Diamond coated bretheren at Goldman Sachs.
Well, if that is the case, RSmitty, then Prince Charlie’s attempt to put all the blame on Democrats for either their refusal to help support the plant with lesser regulations and more tax breaks is equally wrong. If the plant was such a money loser due to problems with the facility, then it was Valero’s decision to cut their losses. Indeed, it is said that Valero will save $459 million next year alone by shutting the planet. So in the end, it was a capitalist decision in that aspect as well.
I will address the environmental impact today. As is usually the case, the company will walk away from its obligation to clean up the disaster it created at that site, leaving it to the state (you and me) to deal with the consequences. For Valero, the fines they were assessed were just a part of doing business, something they can now ignore.
So is it better to have a repeat environmental offender remain open or close its doors and protect the environment?
“The owners of Valero were losing money in operating the plant”
That says it all.
we can theorize as to whether weaker or strong environmental regulations would have kept the plant open…
my own feeling is that if, over the last 20 years, the state had enforced existing polution regulations and forced the plant to clean up it’s act , it would be in better shape today and more likely to survive the recession.
the bottom line is the plant was loosing money and didn’t see things getting better, so it closed. This is a high dollar no confidance vote on the economy.
Valero and its predecessors set up the notion that it was ‘Too Big to Be Regulated’.
A succession of governors and DNREC officials agreed. Not hard to do when, for example, Big Oil Lobbyist Gary Patterson doubles as Aunt Bea’s top advisor.
I suspect that Another Mike is likely correct about the cleanup disaster that’ll be left behind.
Colin O’Mara and the AG must do everything possible to hold Valero accountable for whatever problems inevitably surface at that site.
If I remember correctly, this is the only refinery on the east coast that refined sour crude (as opposed to sweet crude). I wonder if changes in that market drove this change in some way.
But here’s the thing about them losing money, if they can’t make money when they actually have to include their real costs (like pollution controls) then get out of the business. There is plenty of oil wells in the US that we could drain, but we don’t because they wouldn’t be profitable at today’s prices. Same concept. If the price of gas isn’t high enough to run the plant at a profit, what in the world are we supposed to do? Let them dump sulfuric acid in the Delaware to save the jobs? Give them cash infusions?
I feel extra bad about this because my next-door neighbor is an electrician there and this cannot be good news for him.
On the plus side, let’s get some lightering taxes now.
only refinery on the east coast that refined sour crude
yup, one less buyer for Venezualen crude…
Ha ha, someone needs to change the bandage on the gaping head wound.
Unless it’s my headwound, “Sour crude” is another name for “shale oil”, which is the crap that conservatives want to DRILL BABY DRILL for right next to our beaches and estuaries.
So now expanding offshore drilling makes even less sense than usual.
Most of the others are in Texas, as I recall. And there ia also a good deal of former Soviet Union oil that is sour as well.
Shale oil is different.
We are experincing the dark side of the free market system now just as they did in the 1930,s. It works something like this, as unemployment rises and demand for goods and services falls prices should fall to increase demand, but there was not a futures market for commodities back then, and that market prices in world wide demand so in effect we are heading for a situation that may be worse than the great depression, as they ran short of money prices fell, we are now going to run short of money and watch prices rise. Not a good situation. We need some of the price controls of the new deal, but instead of proping prices up for the farmers we need to lower them for the consumer.
IMHO, shoe throwing instructer is brilliant here. Another example of how the new rules of global markets can screw us. Badly. And they will unless everyday, ordinary Americans kick up some noise.
All these shoulds and musts will only be realized when Americans are waking up, getting busy and getting active and sitting on our Congressional Delegation to do the right thing. Protectionist *GASP* Isolationist. Fuck yeah.
Kowalko coming onto WDEL at 535 about Valero. I expect he will rip Charlie a new one.
I’m tuning in.
Ladies and gentlemen,
You have the advantage of witnessing the final morphing of Charlie Copeland into a Rick Jensen of the blogosphere.
Charlie has taken no verifiable facts, added a dose of false accusations, sprinkled in some blame without regard to any sense of honesty, shaken with a dose of pretend compassion for those who will suffer job losses and “VIOLA”===A political issue born of a nonsensical ignorance of reality, to be applied liberally to the Republican campaign of your choosing.
Valero is a company comprised of Oil Refineries. They have no vested interest in oil reserves, community engagement or fairness to the average worker. They are the modern day carpetbagger. They lease the car, hit the potholes and ignore the deterioration because at the end of the day they will turn it back in to be another’s problem.
Every day that they produce a gallon of gasoline at peak price is a day of celebration and corporate contentment. Every day that they reinvest in infrastructural maintenance or preventative equipment upgrades can be recorded by a lunar eclipse.
A little dollop of truth for Charlie, Valero was excluded from the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative recently enacted. Although contributing a disproportionate amount of Carbon Dioxide releases from their energy generating plant they begged for the exemption,threatening organized labor with layoffs, lobbying that the costs passed through to the consumer would be unbearable. So not willing to risk that substantial negative economic impact I struck my amendment to include the refinery (as it should have been) although I voted against the RGGI initiative because of that and other reasons I am not particular proud that I succumbed to fear-mongering tactics. Now the next chapter unfolded. The refinery shut down its pollution spewing Coker under the guise of cost savings and continued to run the facility with little regard to routine maintenance as long as gasoline was topping $4gal. This ill considered attitude soon had its negative impact and they experienced a major unscheduled shutdown. None of this was a result of over regulation, interference by environmental constrictions or provoked by the Democratic Administration of Gov. Markell or the newly acquired majority in the House.
The last owner in the half-dozen or so transitions that I personally experienced that had a preventative maintenance and legitimate quality control program in place with the monetary commitment to its success was the Motiva owners. The grueling process of refining oil and the toll it takes on men and equipment cannot maintain the pace to satisfy the thirst for profit if you exclude the costs of proper and safe maintenace of that equipment and your workforce.
The refinery was never in safer hands than when it was 100% unionized. When different owners would compare the profit loss margin of the Delaware City Refinery with their other facilities they would present a bottom line,(ignoring the higher operational expenses of a facility capable of refining dirty/sour crude) and not including the massive losses of life and destruction that would too often occur in their non-union Port Arthur Texas plant or any of their other non-union Louisiana/Southwest facilities.
So Charlie its about time to dump the Jensen facade of innuendo, misrepresentations. You’re much to intelligent to truly believe some of the things you say.
Respectfully,
John Kowalko
I have taken John’s comment and put it into its own post. Please comment there.