[sammyg2]

You want lower gas prices? Call your congressman and ask him to investigate why the DWP or edison or whoever is supplying power to the refineries are having so much trouble keeping an uninterupted flow.
When you lose power at home your lights go out. When a refinery loses power people might get hurt or killed, and sometimes bad things happen that can cripple the refinery for a month or longer which costs the company many millions and creates higher prices for the consumer due to lower supply. I've been inside a refinery during 4 different complete power outages, it is a very scary time. People are running, scrambling to try and control a very dangerous process when all the normal controls are no longer working. Heaters are probably the most dangerous. Extremely flammable hydrocarbons flow through the heater tubes. When the flow stops, the temperature of the liquid escalates very quickly. The operators crank up steam turbines to pump the liquid and re-establish flow, but the boilers often trip during a power outage so the turbines only have enough steam to run for a short period. If the flow through the heater can't be maintained until the heater is cooled down, it can explode. Imagine filling your water heater at your house with a mixture of gasoline and hydrogen. Pressurize it to 2000 psi, turn the heater on full blast, then disconnect the thermostat so it won't shut off and the temperature get up to around 1000 degrees or more. Now take that heater and multiply the volume by about 50,000 times and hope you don't take out an entire city block when it goes boom. Not good. The only reason it doesn't take out the entire refinery is because of quick thinking and reactions of highly qualified people.
remember, moany of these refineries were designed and built a long time ago. the one I work at now was built during world war II to supply the US fighter pilots with high octane gasoline for the pacific theatre. Not exactly state of the art, but it's extremely difficult and expensive to rebuild it with more modern technology. We're always upgrading small parts of the plant, but the environmentalists, their lawyers, CARB, and AQMD kill requests for permits to build new units.
Below are two very recent examples:

SAN ANTONIO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Tesoro Corporation (“Tesoro”) (NYSE:TSO - News) today announced that its 95,000-barrel-per-day Kapolei, Hawaii refinery on the island of Oahu was shut down early Sunday, Nov. 4, as a result of a power outage during a severe storm that moved through the area. The majority of the refinery’s units were brought back online safely; however the Continuous Reformer Unit (CRU) did incur some damage and is currently shut down for repairs. The CRU is involved with the production of high octane gasoline.

At this time, the refinery is running at a reduced rate and repairs to the reformer are under way. Tesoro is evaluating alternatives to fulfill customer requirements until repairs are completed. The timing for completion of repairs is under review.

Tesoro now expects its Kapolei refinery throughput in the range of 70,000 to 80,000 barrels per day during the fourth quarter 2007 with direct operating expense in the $2.60 to $3.20 per barrel range. Prior guidance was 80,000 to 85,000 barrels per day with expenses of $1.85 per barrel.

NEW YORK, Nov 8 (Reuters) - A diesel hydrotreater at Valero Energy Corp's (VLO.N: Quote, Profile, Research) 325,000-barrel-per-day (bpd) refinery in Port Arthur, Texas, will likely remain shut for two to four weeks for repairs after a Thursday morning fire, said sources familiar with refinery operations.

A Valero spokesman said the the company was still attempting to determine the extent of damage to the hydrotreater after a fire broke out in a heater on the unit.

"We're still evaluating the damage and the impact on production at the refinery, and there are no firm estimates yet," said Valero spokesman Bill Day.

No workers were injured in the fire, but one contractor was taken to the hospital for treatment of anxiety, Day said.

A large number of contractors were in the north area of the refinery preparing for upcoming unit overhauls, the sources said.

A power failure Thursday morning on the north side of the refinery caused heated feedstocks to stop moving through tubes in the heater. One of the tubes ruptured due to the heat build-up, the sources said.

The fire was extinguished in about an hour.

Most of the damage was thought confined to the heater, the sources said, and did not extend to the entire hydrotreater. Evaluation of the damage could last into the weekend. If the damage was contained primarily to the heater, repairs would probably take between two and four weeks.