June 22, 2012:

Appearing with the governor at a capital news conference, elected officials crossed party lines while US Steelworkers and AFL-CIO officials stood shoulder-to-shoulder with big business to signal their support of the plan Corbett estimates will create 10,000 one-time construction jobs and 400 plant jobs in Beaver County, and up to another 17,000 jobs in associated industries. “This day represents a group of people coming together from different perspectives, from labor, from industry, Republican, Democrat, to talk not about partisan politics, but to talk about jobs,” Corbett said. “This bill today, with the tax credit, is really a jobs bill.” Though the labor presence suggested a broader interest, the elected officials on the stage all came from southwestern Pennsylvania, the region where the facility would be built. Opinions from central Pennsylvania lawmakers on the proposal ranged from cautiously optimistic to outright skepticism. Like State Sen. Mike Brubaker, R-Lancaster County, State Rep. Sue Helm, R-Dauphin County, said she was reserving judgment, but she added that the proposal was certainly worth considering.

“People are crying out about education [funding cuts],” Helm said. “That'd be more money for education.” State Sen. Pat Vance, R-Camp Hill, said she was “not normally enthusiastic about tax credits,” but still needed to see the language of the bill. State Sen. Jeff Piccola, R-Harrisburg, was also waiting on specifics, but shared Vance's skepticism. “I don't have a hard and fast ideological viewpoint on tax credits for economic development,” Piccola said. “But I'm suspicious of them because I don't think government should be making those kinds of economic decisions of who the winners and losers are going to be. The burden is on those that want the tax credit, the assistance, or subsidy to demonstrate why this is a good idea.” But state Rep. Michael Sturla, D-Lancaster County, was most wary of the plan and the “periodic reviews” Corbett said would be used to ensure the tax credits were working for the state. “When they say 'This isn't working,' is there a mechanism that shuts down the credit, or do you have to go back and convince the legislature to take them back, or nullify the deal,” Sturla said.

By Pennlive.com

June 22, 2012:

LOS ANGELES -- A Los Angeles jury has awarded $8.5 million to a woman who was fired from a Wilmington refinery after being injured on the job. City News Service says the jury ruled Thursday in favor of Michele Daniel. Daniel began working at the Tesoro refinery in 1989 and was a shift supervisor when she hurt her knee in 2005. She was placed on extended leave and later fired. Her lawsuit claims the company should have given her back her original job or another that would accommodate her disability. Tesoro's lawyers said she was fired in 2009 when her condition didn't improve and she either couldn't perform or was unqualified for the jobs she sought.

By The Associated Press

June 22, 2012:

European jet fuel purchases are set to reach the highest levels in more than a year as the London Olympics and Euro 2012 soccer tournament boost travel during the summer months just as refineries in the region are shuttered. Imports from the Middle East and Asia will increase to about 1.9 million metric tons this month, according to the median estimate in a Bloomberg News survey of two traders and three brokers. That’s the most since at least March 2011, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Stockpiles fell to the lowest since 2008, PJK International data show. The rising shipments underscore the growing dependence on imports for European airlines such as British Airways owner International Consolidated Airlines Group SA (IAG) after the closing of six refineries this year. That’s benefiting producers such as India’s Reliance Industries Ltd. (RIL), owner of the world’s largest refining complex, and Kuwait Petroleum Corp.

“We’ve got the Olympics and we’ve got quite a busy summer of tourism and sport expected,” Roy Jordan, an analyst at Facts Global Energy Inc. in London, said in a telephone interview. “We’re normally structurally tight on jet fuel in Europe and the fact that we’ve had so much refinery capacity down is one of the factors that’s left a gap” in supply, he said. The region’s debt crisis and higher Brent crude prices earlier this year sapped fuel demand and eroded processing profits, pushing Petroplus Holdings AG, once Europe’s largest independent refiner, to file for insolvency. The company’s Coryton refinery in the U.K. started to shut down on June 6 after administrators failed to find a buyer.

Trend to Continue

About 1.4 million tons of jet fuel have been booked to sail to Europe so far this month, according to reports from four shipbrokers including Delhi-based Interocean Shipping. The cargoes are from India, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and South Korea, the reports showed. “The trend for increased jet fuel imports will continue,” Tony Astor, former head of fuel strategy for BAA Airports Plc and founder of Astor Consulting, said June 19 by phone from Dorking, England. “You’ll see more jet fuel imported, partly because of the two vast oil refineries in India and also because of global sourcing of aviation fuel by oil companies,” he said. Reliance’s twin plants in Jamnagar, India, comprise the world’s largest refining site. The European Organization for the Safety of Air Navigation, or Eurocontrol, forecasts flights to, from and within the U.K. will increase 1 percent to 5,780 a day in August because of the Olympics. Without the games, air traffic would drop 1 percent.

‘Short-Term Spike’

‘It’s a short-term spike in what would otherwise be a weak summer,” David Marsh, head of forecasting and traffic analysis at Eurocontrol, said by phone from Brussels June 7. The London Olympics will attract more than 320,000 overseas visitors, according to national tourism agency VisitBritain, citing a study conducted by Oxford Economics. Brussels, Amsterdam and Paris are also seeing an increase in travel during this period, Madrid-based Amadeus and Barcelona-based Forward Data said in a report in March. The Euro 2012 is estimated to cause a 12 percent rise in flights to and from Poland in June, while Ukraine journeys will jump 20 percent versus the previous year, Eurocontrol said. Airline profits are “anemic” because of high oil prices, Tony Tyler, the chief executive officer of the International Air Transport Association, said in a June 11 speech in Beijing. The industry’s fuel bill is forecast to reach $207 billion this year, accounting for a third of costs, he said.

Single-Biggest Cost

“Fuel is our biggest single cost,” British Airways spokeswoman Nicola Pearson said by e-mail. “We work with a number of suppliers to ensure we get the best value for money at all times.” European air passenger traffic rose 6.8 percent in the first four months of 2012, from the same period a year earlier, according to IATA data on May 30. Europe accounts for 28.3 percent, the second largest share, of global passenger traffic. “We are optimistic on global jet fuel demand, at least for the coming year,” David Wech, head of research at Vienna-based consultant JBC Energy GmbH, said in a June 15 note. The consultant forecasts aviation fuel use will grow by almost 100,000 barrels a day in 2013 as economic activity recovers. Delta Air Lines Inc. (DAL) (DAL) broke with industry norms of not owning fuel assets by announcing the purchase in April of the 185,000 barrel-a-day Trainer oil refinery near Philadelphia from ConocoPhillips in a bid to curb its reliance on outside suppliers and better manage price risks.

In Europe, about 1.1 million barrels a day of refining capacity, or about 7 percent of the region’s total, has been permanently shut since early 2011 because of declining profits. Jet fuel demand fell 3.6 percent in April from a year earlier to 1.16 million barrels a day in European member countries of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the International Energy Agency said on June 13. Stockpiles of jet fuel held in the Amsterdam-Rotterdam- Antwerp oil hub fell to 297,000 tons in the week to yesterday, the lowest since July 2008, according to PJK International BV, a researcher based in the Netherlands.

The surge in imports may depress jet fuel differentials, which have dropped 27 percent this month, according to KBC Energy Economics. Cargoes were yesterday at $46.50 a ton more than benchmark gasoil on the ICE Futures Europe exchange in London, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. That’s down from a premium of $69.25 on May 31. Gasoil slid $11, or 1.3 percent, to $811 a ton on ICE today. “Whenever there is more demand, some material starts to move from Asia, which puts pressure on prices,” Ehsan Ul-Haq, senior market consultant at KBC, said by phone from Walton-on- Thames, England. “Jet fuel demand has been relatively strong because intraregional travel is doing quite fine. Some airlines might be stockpiling ahead of these events.” The following table lists the monthly volume of shipments to Europe since March 2011 based on shipbroker reports and surveys of traders and brokers:

MONTH     VOLUME (tons)

----------------------------------------------------------------

2012

June      1.9 million

May       1.4 million

April     1.8 million

March     1.1 million

February  1.3 million

January   0.8 million

2011

December  0.8 million

November  1.5 million

October   1.2 million

September 0.9 million

August    1.3 million

July      1.5 million

June      1.3 million

May       1.6 million

April     1.2 million

March     1.2 million

______________________________________

By Bloomberg

June 22, 2012:

OAO Rosneft fell the most in more than two weeks as plans to build a refinery spurred concern profit at Russia’s largest oil producer may suffer from capital expense. The stock declined 1.5 percent to 204.39 rubles by the close in Moscow, the most since June 5. Rosneft yesterday agreed to borrow as much as 100 billion rubles ($3 billion) for five years from VTB Group for the refinery near Moscow and is looking to develop projects with Eni SpA and Statoil ASA. The refinery’s cost projection is more than $7 billion and its capacity will be as much as 12 million metric tons a year, Sergei Shoigu, the regional governor, said at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum yesterday. “We see the news as negative for Rosneft,” UralSib Capital analysts led by Alexei Kokin said in an e-mailed note. “The company’s investment decisions are based on government priorities rather than on maximization of shareholder value, which thus create significant.

By Bloomberg

June 22. 2012:

Motiva Enterprises LLC moved to prepare half its giant Port Arthur, Texas, refinery for an extended shut-down this week after a major glitch with a new unit, closing down other units and reducing oil shipments from Saudi Arabia. In the first public acknowledgment of the severity of the problem at the plant, Motiva co-owner Royal Dutch Shell Plc said late on Wednesday that the stricken 325,000 barrel-per-day (bpd) unit was shut due to "corrosion problems," as originally reported earlier this week by Reuters. On Thursday, an industry source said Saudi Arabia halted crude shipments to the new unit until at least mid-July. State oil firm Saudi Aramco, the other co-owner of the plant, had ramped up supplies to the plant this year to feed the new unit, the cornerstone of its five-year, $10 billion expansion. Aramco would evaluate restarting shipments after that depending on the status of the refinery.

"The outage of the new crude unit may continue for several months, while the causes of the issue are established and rectified," Shell said in a statement late on Wednesday. Sources said the new crude distillation unit, which began production in April and was shut following a June 9 fire, may be idle for up to a year to repair extensive corrosion found in the unit -- up from initial estimates of two to five months. Shell said all secondary units built as part of the five-year, $10 billion project were fully operational, although some were running at reduced throughput. But sources familiar with operations said one of the new units -- a catalytic feed hydrotreater that removes sulfur from feedstock going to the refinery's gasoline-producing fluidic catalytic cracking unit -- would but shut down this week because of a lack of feedstock from the idled crude unit. The sources also said Motiva was shutting an older catalytic reformer, which creates gasoline additives.

Motiva officials were not immediately available to comment on details of the secondary unit operations. In the statement, Shell said the refinery's original 285,000 bpd complex was operating "as per plan." Motiva's Port Arthur refinery is not shutting the refinery's FCC, but will emphasize production of diesel, which is yielding higher returns for U.S. refiners as an export, the sources said.

SAUDI CUTBACK

The reduction of supplies from Saudi Arabia comes after the kingdom ramped up shipments to the refinery, in part to build up inventories before the expansion started up. Saudi Arabia could cut shipments by up to three Very Large Crude Carriers per month, or roughly 200,000 bpd, industry and shipping sources said. Motiva imported 315,000 bpd of Saudi crude in the first quarter, a 112,000-bpd increase from the year before, according to Reuters calculations based on U.S. government data.  A spokeswoman for Shell, which has been handling queries on behalf of Motiva, said she could not comment on refinery operations or crude oil supplies for "competitive reasons". "However, regarding how this will impact crude supply and making of products, Motiva is well positioned to manage the supply of crude and products and is working effectively with both owners," the spokeswoman said.

By Reuters