May 22, 2012:

Philadelphia’s refiner­ies aren’t the only ones suf­fer­ing from high crude prices and lower demand. Impe­r­ial Oil, a Cana­dian com­pany, just put its 95-year-old refin­ery in Nova Sco­tia up for sale. The rea­sons for refin­ery clo­sures can be com­plex, and range from lack of effi­cien­cies to the price of raw crude. NPR’s Jeff Brady explained the Philadel­phia area clo­sures in this piece last Decem­ber. Delta Air­lines recently stepped in as an unlikely sav­ior of Philadel­phia area refin­ing. It will be inter­est­ing to watch whether Delta’s sav­ings on jet fuel will make up for the losses suf­fered by the pre­vi­ous owner, ConocoPhillips.

In the mean­time, there’s good news for con­sumers. The price at the pump is going down. Pre­vi­ous pre­dic­tions had a gal­lon of gas going for $5 this sum­mer, partly due to the refin­ery shut-downs in Philadel­phia. But with the Delta pur­chase and less bad news from the Mid­dle East, it looks like gas prices won’t con­tinue to rise this sum­mer. And more good news from the energy cost front — gov­ern­ment reg­u­la­tors say elec­tric­ity prices will drop this sum­mer because of the low cost of nat­ural gas.

By stateimpact.npr.org