Recently in Refining Category

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas, just not in the heating oil market.

US retailers are trying to jump-start holiday buying early this year, moving from the goblins and witches straight to the over-sized ornaments and eggnog flavored lattes.

Heating oil bulls looking for some holiday cheer aren't going to find it in the crack spreads. The December NYMEX heating oil crack spread settled at $6.44/barrel on November 16, the January 2010 crack at $7.41/b and the February 2010 at $7.94/b. By comparison, on November 17, 2008, the December 2008 NYMEX heating oil crack settled at $20.27/b, the January 2009 at $20.49/b and the February 2009 at $20.48/b.

There is a story told to young Platts reporters that the term "mogas" has its origins in the early days of international oil trading.

The story goes thus: Amazed at the relatively cheap prices that you could buy 'gas' in the European market, US traders gleefully shelled out for cargoes only to find that in buying gas they had bought... well, gas.

There ought to be a law! It's the usual refrain, and often legislative action, when faced with serious concerns such as those that inspired a pending US House bill that would give the Department of Homeland Security authority over what chemicals are used in the refining process.

The world of oil is in for a roller-coaster ride over the next few years if Deutsche Bank analysts are right, with oil demand set to peak in just seven years' time as crude spikes again, this time to $175/barrel, before falling into long-term decline.

It won't be a case of oil running out, however. Rather, the world will become much more efficient in its use of energy. But in the next few years, Deutsche predicts, we will see a lot of volatility and even more chronic under-investment in production capacity.

Sunoco's plans to indefinitely shut for economic reasons its 145,000 b/d Eagle Point refinery in Westville, New Jersey, near Philadelphia, did not come as a major surprise to most in the gasoline market.

But they add it would take many more similar shutdowns, not only on the US Atlantic Coast but also down on the US Gulf Coast, before such moves would generate any tangible effect on US refining margins.

The Indian airline industry received yet another blow September 8, when about 360 Jet Airways pilots went on an illegal strike in Mumbai to protest the dismissal of two union employees in August.

It's an old sporting adage and one that in England is often ascribed to the legendary football manager, Brian Clough. Ahead of a key soccer match, an interviewer posed the question of whether Clough could expect to win a game when, on paper, his team was clearly outclassed.

Clough, never short of a Churchillian response, coolly observed; "The game's not played on paper, young man. It's played on grass."