"No Plan B, No Excess Capacity Anywhere": Oil Industry Warns Of Looming Refining Crisis As "Dirty" China Grabs Market Share
https://www.zerohedge.com/commodities/no-plan-b-no-excess-capacity-anywhere-oil-industry-warns-looming-refining-crisis-dirtyOver the past 3 years, we have often said that with the Biden administration's unprecedented and bizarre belligerence toward the US E&P sector, where even Rabobank notes tongue-in-cheek that the Fed is purposefully selling oil to keep its price low and ensure Biden's reelection...
With a largely-drained US Strategic Petroleum Reserve, if the Fed really are active in oil futures, as some whisper, they need to get busy again soon.
... it will be a miracle if any new refineries are built at all, and as a result of moribund capex spending, the cracking (no pun intended) US refining infrastructure will soon become the gating factor for gasoline production, even more so than access to oil.
Well, we were right: as Bloomberg reports, the increasingly stretched global refining system means fuel-price volatility is set to become more common, top oil executives warned at the APPEC by S&P Global Insights conference in Singapore this week.
The lack of spare crude-processing capacity due to under-investment, and shutdowns happening more frequently with refiners ramping up on better margins and deferring planned work were common themes at the APPEC by S&P Global Insights conference in Singapore this week. That’s left fuels like diesel and gasoline vulnerable to sudden swings when there are unplanned outages.
There looks to be a looming shortage of fuel due refinery shutdown and transition to "green" energy.
And while China's own economy is suffering despite what Goldman recently calculated was record oil demand...
... the world's 2nd biggest economy is taking advantage of the western refining crisis to steal market share, and indeed transport fuel has become one of China’s fastest growing export sectors as the government increasingly leans on overseas sales to keep its vast oil refineries humming.
Beijing’s generous quotas for gasoline, diesel and jet fuel are allowing refiners to bypass uncertain home demand and profit from stronger world prices for oil products. That’s helping the economy’s otherwise poor export performance since the end of the pandemic; and yes, it comes at a staggering environmental cost.
In other words, by crippling western production - where there was at least some regulatory supervision over environmental standards - the green idiots have pushed the bulk of production to China where anything goes, and the environmental fallout resulting from this transfer is order of magnitude worse than if liberal progressives had not stuck their clueless noses in what they don't understand (which is pretty much everything) yet again.
China is expanding refinery capacity. What the green crowd do not realize, is there more pollution when fuel is exported.
