Angry About High Gas Prices? Blame Shuttered Oil Refineries

The common price of gas is up more than 10 percent because the start of the year, a spot over and over made during Wednesday’s Republican Presidential debate. Predictably, the four GOP candidates blamed President Barack Obama for the steep increase.

Actually, the President doesn’t have that sort of pricing power. The more likely reason behind the purchase price increase, though certainly less compelling as a political argument, may be the recent spate of refinery closures in the U. S. Over the past year, refineries have faced a vintage margin squeeze. Charges for Brent crude have risen, but demand for gasoline in the U. S. is at a 15-year low. Which means refineries haven’t been able to spread the bigger prices with their customers.

Because of this, businesses have opted for to shut down a small number of large refineries instead of keep on to reduce money in it. Since December, the U. S. has lost about 4 percent of its refining capacity, says Fadel Gheit, a senior oil and gas analyst for Oppenheimer. That month, two large refineries outside Philadelphia shut down: Sunoco’s plant in Marcus Hook, Pa., and a ConocoPhillips plant in nearby Trainer, Pa. Together they accounted for about 20 percent of all gasoline stated in the Northeast.

This week, Hovensa finished shutting down its refinery in St. Croix. The plant processed 350, 000 barrels of crude a day, yet lost about $1. 3 billion over the past 3 years, or roughly $1 million a day. The St. Croix plant got hit with a double whammy of pricing pressure. Not only did it face higher charges for Brent crude, but it also lacked access to inexpensive gas, a essential raw material for refineries. Without the benefit of low gas prices, which are down 50 percent since June 2011, it’s likely that more refineries could have had to shut down.

The U. S. refining industry has been split up in two. On one hand will be the older refineries, mostly on the East and Gulf Coasts, that are set up to take care of only the bigger quality Brent “sweet” crude—the items that comes from the center East and the North Sea. Brent is simpler to refine, though it’s gotten dramatically more expensive recently. (Certainly another reason behind higher gas prices. )

Then you can find the plants able to refine the heavier, dirtier West Texas Intermediate (WTI)—the items that comes from Canadian tar sands, the deep water of the Gulf coast of florida, and the newer outposts in North Dakota, which just passed Ecuador in oil production. These refineries tend to be clustered in the Midwest—places such as Oklahoma, Kansas, and outside Chicago. While the price of Brent crude has closed at over $120 a barrel in recent days, WTI is trading at closer to $106. That simple differential 's the reason older refineries that may handle only Brent are hemorrhaging cash and shutting down, while refineries that may handle WTI are flourishing.

“The U. S. refining industry is undergoing an enormous, regional transformation, ” says Ben Brockwell, a director at Oil Price Information Services. “If you look at refinery utilization rates in the Midwest and Great Lakes areas, they’re running at near 95 percent capacity, and on the East Coast it’s more like 60 percent, ” he says.

This is primarily why the cheapest gas prices in the united kingdom are found such states as Colorado, Utah, Montana, and New Mexico, while Ny, Connecticut, and Washington, D. C., involve some of the highest prices.

Five of the Worst Celebrity Beauty Blunders of all time

christina aguilera
christina aguilera
Ever gone all morning with lipstick on your teeth, or attended a wedding with orange, self-tanned palms? Or possibly you've accidentally dyed your hair a shade of garbage, or used Nair where you mustn't have and were left with two giant blisters on the sides of one's upper lip. At one point or another, just about everyone has experienced an uncomfortable beauty blunder. But! We're not alone. Celebrities have problems with exactly the same affliction -- it's that if they create a mistake, it's immortalized on the net forever. After all, the worst consequence we face after a makeup disaster is a morning spent untagging a million Facebook photos.

I understand these stars are most likely mortified by their beauty bloopers, but they make us regular old Josephinas feel better about ourselves because, somewhere along the way, we, too, have been there, done that. So these 5 stars should take delight in the fact that women everywhere tooootally understand how they feel.

Take Christina Aguilera, above. She sang "At Last" at Etta James' funeral back in late January also it may have been the first time in history when individuals were more blown away by her legs than her voice. Streaking down the inside of her stems was some dark orange self-tanner, and boy, was it distracting.


Nicole Kidman
Nicole Kidman
Then there's Nicole Kidman. She apparently experienced a fight with a powder puff before her Nine premiere, and the powder puff won. After all, it will need to have really beaten the crap out of her -- it's in her hair and everything.








Kelly Osborne
Kelly Osborne
And may somebody please fill me in on what's happening with Kelly Osborne's hair? It's not grayish purplish deliberately, is it?




Lindsay Lohan
Lindsay Lohan
Naturally, or rather completely unnaturally, Lindsay Lohan takes beauty blunders to another level with this terrible synthetic wig, yellowish foundation, bronze eyeshadow, and a pale, overstuffed lip.







Britney Spears
Britney Spears
Here, Britney Spears shows us the dangers of hair extensions. Most of us have tried extensions a few times and know that if they are not correctly maintained or styled, things can get ugly. And bumpy. And oddly spaced. And... just... no .

Eva Longoria's Sexy Revealing Dress

Eva Longoria's Revealing Dress

Eva Longoria's Sexy Revealing Dress
Eva Longoria's Sexy Revealing Dress
Eva Longoria stepped out Thursday night rocking a super-sexy dress with a plunging neckline that showed off some serious skin! The night before, she donned a sultry pantsuit and boy, did she look hot. Which look do you like most readily useful? Plus, Tyra Banks graduates from Harvard Business School, and we're sharing our favorite celeb TwitPics of the week. Tell us on Facebook that you like most readily useful -- and why!

Eva Longoria's Photo

Eva Longoria's Sexy Revealing Dress
Eva Longoria's Sexy Revealing Dress
Eva Longoria's Sexy
Eva Longoria's Sexy
Eva Longoria's Boobs
Eva Longoria's Boobs

FDA Panel Recommends Approval of Diet Drug Qnexa

FDA Panel Recommends Approval of Diet Drug Qnexa
A U. S. Food and Drug Administration Advisory Committee today recommended approval of the weight reduction drug Qnexa, cure many hope can help millions of Americans who have a problem with obesity.

In voting 20 to 2 for approval, the committee said today that Qnexa's weight reduction benefits for the chronically obese outweighed the risks of birth defects and cardiovascular problems which have been from the drug. An FDA advisory panel recommended against approval this year over concerns concerning the drug's unwanted effects, and the FDA rejected it briefly after that. Vivus, the drug's manufacturer, recently submitted additional research.

The committee today recommended that the manufacturer take an amount of steps to avoid the drug from causing birth defects like cleft palate, including a possible warning label targeted toward women of childbearing years.

The FDA has considered numerous anti-obesity drugs in the past twenty years, but most have didn't meet the agency's standards for safety and effectiveness. But up to now, data on Qnexa suggests that the drug may be the most effective in helping patients shed around 10 percent of their bodyweight. Those changes, along with diet and exercise modifications, could go quite a distance toward alleviating some of the health problems connected with obesity, such as diabetes and high blood pressure.

Critics say the chance of potentially dangerous unwanted effects of Qnexa, such as increased heartrate, heart attacks and arrhythmias, are too great to make the drug available to millions of people, especially because long-term effects of the drug remain largely unknown.

"Public health can't tolerate another diet drug approved which has not been accepted for cardiovascular risk especially in light of the suggested findings of Qnexa, " said Dr . Sidney Wolfe, director of the health research group at Public Citizen, an advocacy group.

Obesity currently plagues one-third of Americans and contains been associated with high blood pressure, diabetes and a selection of other chronic, expensive health problems. Doctors and dietitians routinely recommend changes in diet and exercise because the safest and most effective way to shed pounds. But some acknowledge that these strategies just don't work with a large number of obese patients. Bariatric surgery, though largely successful in producing weight reduction, is not a viable option for many individuals.

Dr . Melina Jampolis, an obesity specialist in San francisco bay area, said the existing options for treating obesity are "frustratingly limited, " and said it might be helpful if patients had additional tools to aid their weight reduction.

"I believe that combination therapy is vital as you'll find so many individual and overlapping mechanisms that make weight reduction difficult, " she said. "So the more of these you could address with medication therapy when necessary, the more effective a regimen will be. "