[billybek]

With all the profit that was pulled in by big oil during the last few years, it surprises me that there wasn't more of an investment in infrastructure.
Sure it costs big coin to make these changes and any shutdown time is nothing but money not being made, but it seems like the massive profits should have been partially reinvested.
How old are some of the production lines you work with and or have seen at some of your refineries?
Recently in Alberta, Petro Canada lost a line on at their refinery and their gas stations were dry for quite some time. Kept fuel prices in Alberta artificially high.
It is hard to plan for break downs but they are running these refineries hard with very little or no redundancy.
Prices of oil and fuel will rebound in short period of time as world supply is dwindling and the cost of producing oil/fuel from non traditional supplies is high. Once the current economic bump in the road is behind us the speculators will take oil prices and run with them again. Current prices certainly reflect how much of the price of oil was driven by speculators.