Shell Oil president: To cut price, produce more gasoline in U.S.

[sabra]

Source: CNN

<snip>

John Hofmeister, president of Shell Oil Co., the U.S. division of Royal Dutch Shell, addressed rising gasoline prices during an interview Wednesday with John Roberts on CNN's "American Morning."

ROBERTS: What do you say to people who are in this budget crunch of trying to fill up the family car?

HOFMEISTER: I say we need more gas to be produced in this country. I've been saying that for three years, ever since I took this position (as president of Shell).

If the U.S. set a goal to produce 2 to 3 million barrels more a day in this country, we would send a shock around the world that would immediately say to the speculators, hey, U.S. is serious. President said something yesterday about this. I didn't hear him, but I think that's good news. But we should set a specific target.

The presidential candidates should be out there on the postings saying let's increase domestic production by 2 to 3 million barrels a day. That would be something that would put money back into this country, jobs back into this country, and it would bring more supply toward the Americans who need it.

Read more: http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/04/30/shell.qa /

[islandmkl]

1. well...that's the ticket...thanks for the insight...

oh, and what would that do for Royal Dutch Shell, while you're at it?

[papau]

15. Fellow is an idiot or liar - we need new refineries he said forgetting we only run at 85% now

[DJ13]

2. Well thats great and all, but how many refineries has Shell built in 30 years?

0

ZERO

NADA

<crickets>

[underpants]

4. See thorough discussion of THAT here

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...

[Andy823]

5. Has any big oil company

Built new refineries? I heard that as the big companies bought out the smaller ones, the actually shut down many refineries, which in turn has caused more "shortages", and of course raised the cost of gas to where we are today. Sure they want to produce more oil in the U.S. but will it ever bring prices down? I kind of doubt it.

[RantinRavin]

19. Why build new when you can expand existing

While no new refinery has been built in more than 30 years, companies have been adding on to existing refineries. The Energy Information Administration estimates an additional 800,000 barrels a day of production will be added to existing refineries in the next three years. A joint venture between Shell Oil Co. and the Saudi Arabian oil company is expected to double capacity at a Port Arthur, Texas, refinery.


http://www.gainesville.com/article/20080429/APF/8042910...

[dpbrown]

3. So it's rape ANWR or suffer, eh?

Nice how these multi-millionaire executives don't have any real solutions.

[Mountainman]

6. Bull Shit !! Shell wanted to close it's

refinery in Bakersfield as Katrina was causing "shortages." It was sold to another company that kept it open if I remember correctly.

Shell to Demolish Profitable Refinery
http://www.questionsquestions.net/docs04/refinery.html


Shell Closed Bakersfield, Calif., Refinery to Increase Gas Prices, Group Says.
Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News, April, 2004
By Jon Ortiz, The Sacramento Bee, Calif. Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News

Apr. 7--A consumer advocacy group Tuesday renewed its charges that Shell Oil Products is manipulating gasoline prices by closing and demolishing its Bakersfield refinery later this year.

The Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights released internal Shell documents showing Bakersfield's refining margin at $23.01 per barrel, or about 55 cents profit per gallon, which topped all of Shell's U.S. refineries.

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_hb5553/is_200404/...

[underpants]

7. Boys and girls do you now see why these people are so superior to you and I

and DESERVE those salaries??? Well, do ya?



He earned bachelor's and master's degrees in political science from Kansas State University. He has lived and worked in North America, Europe and Asia
http://www.houston.org/boardMembers/bios.asp?bioID=2022...
he lived AND worked in EUROPE!!! he must be swave and deboner!!!

Great education in POLITICAL SCIENCE you got there at KSU. Did you take a class in business where they explained supply and demand? Did it include graphs or sumpthin for you to keep in your back pocket?

[lonestarnot]

13. Where does he live now. Doesn't he need a trucker parked at the gate of his gated community?

[Nihil]

25. Hmmm ...

> he lived AND worked in EUROPE!!!

Hey ... I live and work in Europe! That means ...
Where's the boss ...?

> he must be swave and deboner!!!

Is it just coincidence that "deboner" is similar to "flaccid"?
I think not!

[pegleg]

8. It's becoming pretty damned obvious that they are keeping prices high

to force us to support arctic drilling and drilling in places previously banned.

[neuvocat]

10. Creation of forced shortages

even though the demand isn't any higher than what it previously was (in fact if anything, demand is lowering due to less economic activity), so the new line of rhetoric apparently is that there just isn't enough to go around (never mind that starting a war in the mideast is the primary culprit).

[defendandprotect]

9. NATIONALIZE OUR OIL INDUSTRY, PUT ELECTRIC CARS ON THE ROADS . .. .

Evidently, the Toyota Prius Hybrid is jumping off the lots ---

I'd love to buy one ---

Needless to say, there was evidence 30-40 years ago that the gas-guzzler was a
bad idea. Now who might have held up alternative energy and electric cars?


PS: And... Winfall Profits Tax on these bastards ---
their wealth has more than provided a way for them to undermine people's government over decades. Let's end that!

[Joanne98]

20. AMEN BROTHER!!!!!!!!

[blayne]

11. I'm think what the president said was...

that he wanted new refineries and new drilling in Alaska. Maybe a new refinery would be good, but I doubt that would ever make it into a bill that didn't also include new drilling in Alaska. In that case, I think I'll pass.

[Triana]

12. To cut price, STOP the *&#^$#^ gas companies from gouging consumers

while they make record profits raping the environment to keep up our fossil-fuel addiction instead of developing/using renewable sources.

[stubtoe]

14. They're salivating over the possibiliy of opening up ANWR.

[bdamomma]

16. they want to drill for oil in the ANWR

instead of curtailing our consumption on oil, there are so many alternative fuel choices. What the hell is wrong with us? ......oh nevermind.

[Faux pas]

17. We have plenty of oil here already. The shortage is such a lie.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Oil_fields_of_the...

[NickB79]

21. Wow, we really are scrambling for crumbs, aren't we?

I clicked on over half of those oil field wiki's, and only a few have over 1 billion barrels of recoverable oil. Bakken: 4 billion, Prudhoe: 12 billion left (13 billion already extracted), Jack 2: 5 billion barrels, and that's about it. At 21 million barrels per day, a 1 billion barrel field would supply the US with oil for just 47 days. The US uses 7.5 BILLION barrels per year.

I would hazard a guess that, if I went through and added up all the reserves listed on that Wiki list, it would amount to less than 10 years of US demand.

But keep believing we have "plenty of oil" in the US, despite declining oil production since 1970.

[Faux pas]

24. Only(?) 10 years????????

The big point of any of this is that we shouldn't be dependent on oil NOW, let alone 10 years from now.

[pattmarty]

18. Did Shell drug test this jag off before they hired him??????

[4dsc]

22. Why build new refineries here??

Oil has peaked, prices to soar - Sadad al-Huseini

Sadad al-Huseini says that global production has reached its maximum sustainable plateau and that output will start to fall within 15 years, by which time the world’s oil resources will be “very severely depleted”.

In an exclusive interview with lastoilshock.com, the former head of exploration and production at Saudi Aramco, said that oil production had reached a structural ceiling determined by geology rather than geopolitics, and that the technical floor for the oil price will rise by $12 annually for the next 4 to 5 years as new fields become increasingly costly to exploit.



According to al-Huseini the technical floor - the basic cost of producing oil excluding factors such as geopolitical risk and hedge fund speculation - is currently about $70 per barrel, meaning the minimum oil price could hit $106 in 2010 and $130 by 2012. Actual crude prices, including financial market factors, could be be as much as $125 by as early as 2010.

Al-Huseini said that Saudi Arabia’s plans to raise production capacity to 12 million barrels per day by 2012 represented “an achievable number”, as the country had announced oil investments of $55 billion between 2003 and 2011. But he cautioned that since some of the new production will come from entirely new fields “how the reservoirs will respond will be determined as they start producing”.

However, al-Huseini disparaged Western expectations that the Kingdom would produce significantly more than 12 mb/d. It was unfair, he said, to expect Saudi to “pull everybody’s chestnuts out of the fire”.

Its time people realize that the future is one that will have less oil.

[postulater]

23. How did the oil companies ever get to own the oil in the first place?

Why is there not a limit on the profit they are allowed to make off our non-renewable resources?

[kestrel91316]

26. Ok, answer me THIS, Herr Hofmeister:

If we decide to drill the hell out of Alaska's north slope TODAY, exactly how long will it take for that oil to start flowing?

A week?
A month?
A year?
A decade? And how, exactly, does this help us right now? I'm confused.

Oh, and how many weeks will that oil last us?

Eight? Ten? Maybe twelve??