Just To Reinforce That Refinery Point …

Last night there was an explosion at the third-largest petroleum refinery in the US. Fragmented fuel markets as a result of the patchwork of 40+ fuel formulations in the US to meet federal+state air quality reguations has created an environment in which our refinery industry has little fault tolerance. Put another way, when unexpected stuff goes wrong, because we can’t just substitute more stuff from somewhere else, quantities don’t adjust so prices have to. Thus price spikes.