Want to build the BITOG refinery ?

[Shannow]

Got this sent to me in an e-mail yesterday.

Less than 15 year old refinery equipment being knocked down in the U.S. ?

http://www.ncmgroup.com/assets

 

[antiqueshell]

It would be great if there could be a "community owned" refinery.

I wonder if this has ever been done before, of course it would have to make a profit, but only enough to keep the equipment in good shape and pay the employees, unlike corporate owned units that need to please greedy shareholders.

I'm interested.

 

[Boomer]

Greedy shareholders? You are probably one through your pension, IRA, 401k, etc. It is investors who support the company with capital and assume the risk. They are entitled to a payback. Don't like capitalism? Go try Cuba and see the difference. Pardon the vent!

 

[Shannow]

IMO, and it's really MO only, "investors" who pump capital into a company or float, or share offer should be treated differently to those who trade their way into an established company.

Wynns built a refinery out in the sticks a few years ago, with the inputs being once used lubricants...were apparently pretty successful.

 

[Burt]

Originally Posted By: antiqueshell
It would be great if there could be a "community owned" refinery.

I wonder if this has ever been done before, of course it would have to make a profit, but only enough to keep the equipment in good shape and pay the employees, unlike corporate owned units that need to please greedy shareholders.

I'm interested.


I think they tried this in a big way in a place called "the Soviet Union". Didn't pan out for them very well and they went bankrupt IIRC.

 

[simple_gifts]

Originally Posted By: Burt
Originally Posted By: antiqueshell
It would be great if there could be a "community owned" refinery.

I wonder if this has ever been done before, of course it would have to make a profit, but only enough to keep the equipment in good shape and pay the employees, unlike corporate owned units that need to please greedy shareholders.

I'm interested.


I think they tried this in a big way in a place called "the Soviet Union". Didn't pan out for them very well and they went bankrupt IIRC.


How do you explain the success of mutual insurance and credit unions? j/k. CCCP was an epic fail, however there is merit in community (customer) owned organizations.

I always wondered why fuel oil couldn't be a coop type of organization.

 

[grampi]

Originally Posted By: Boomer
Greedy shareholders? You are probably one through your pension, IRA, 401k, etc. It is investors who support the company with capital and assume the risk. They are entitled to a payback. Don't like capitalism? Go try Cuba and see the difference. Pardon the vent!


I love capitalism, I just think the $100+ million pensions oil industry execs get is excessive and unnecessary...

 

[Burt]

Originally Posted By: simple_gifts
[How do you explain the success of mutual insurance and credit unions? j/k. CCCP was an epic fail, however there is merit in community (customer) owned organizations.

I always wondered why fuel oil couldn't be a coop type of organization.


Refineries are different than credit unions in that they require lots more capital investment. Credit unions provide products and services solely to their shareholders. People forget that refineries don't just make gasoline, but rather jet fuel, naptha, diesel, asphalt, coke etc. They are always losing money on some prodcut lines and making it up on others. You really want your friendly neighborhood owned refinery to engage in all these product lines just so you can get cheap gasoline? Good luck. And they must make the right decisions on what the future grade of oil they are going to gear up for and where it will come from, not to mention changing environmental regulations. And by the way, it is a very cyclical business - they only make money about once every six years in big hand fulls. Oh, they don't have an FDIC regulating their finances and bailing they out if they get in trouble either.

Maybe you could get a group together to start drilling for oil too? That's were the real money is - ha!

 

[simple_gifts]

Originally Posted By: Burt
Originally Posted By: simple_gifts
[How do you explain the success of mutual insurance and credit unions? j/k. CCCP was an epic fail, however there is merit in community (customer) owned organizations.

I always wondered why fuel oil couldn't be a coop type of organization.


Refineries are different than credit unions in that they require lots more capital investment. Credit unions provide products and services solely to their shareholders. People forget that refineries don't just make gasoline, but rather jet fuel, naptha, diesel, asphalt, coke etc. They are always losing money on some prodcut lines and making it up on others. You really want your friendly neighborhood owned refinery to engage in all these product lines just so you can get cheap gasoline? Good luck. And they must make the right decisions on what the future grade of oil they are going to gear up for and where it will come from, not to mention changing environmental regulations. And by the way, it is a very cyclical business - they only make money about once every six years in big hand fulls. Oh, they don't have an FDIC regulating their finances and bailing they out if they get in trouble either.

Maybe you could get a group together to start drilling for oil too? That's were the real money is - ha!


Actually I was referring to distribution of fuel oil to homes.

I see no "value" in a for profit organization there. They buy on the market and then bring it to your home. Their only expertise would be in "when to buy" I pretty much can determine that as well as them, since all market forces are outside their control.

 

[Burt]

Originally Posted By: simple_gifts

Actually I was referring to distribution of fuel oil to homes.

I see no "value" in a for profit organization there. They buy on the market and then bring it to your home. Their only expertise would be in "when to buy" I pretty much can determine that as well as them, since all market forces are outside their control.


One of the Kennedy's started this concept a few years ago. It was called 'Citizens Energy'.

 

[antiqueshell]

How about a combined employee and customer (community) owned facility?

I agree with others here I have no problem with free enterprise but there is clearly something outrageous about executives making the sums they do today, and usually they are not long term life employees but here today and gone tomorrow, like most executives are in large companies today, a bad thing if you ask me. As it means they have less stake in the communities they are located in.

 

[Burt]

Executives do make to much money, but it is not just oil companies. The problem is a lack of independent boards that give excessive pay packages. You can still pay these executives well, but let's face it, most are not going anywhere else for higher pay.

I disagree that most executives are not life time employees.

 

[SteveSRT8]

Too many people have been drinking the kool aid.

Big execs get big pay. Get used to it.

NO ONE has the right to tell anyone else how much they can make.

This whole controversy over executive compensation is another example of how we are carefully fed what certain special interests want us to know.

 

[antiqueshell]

Originally Posted By: SteveSRT8
Too many people have been drinking the kool aid.

Big execs get big pay. Get used to it.


Problem is that many of these brass hats get rewarded even when the run these companies into the ground! That is flat out
criminal and fraudulent.

Quote:


NO ONE has the right to tell anyone else how much they can make.



Really? I thought that the BoD and shareholders do.

Quote:

This whole controversy over executive compensation is another example of how we are carefully fed what certain special interests want us to know.


Um no, when these brass hats are incompetent and not doing their fiduciary duty it is not only the duty of the BoD and shareholders job to restrict pay of these execs it is also the responsibility of every employee of that organization to prevent the looting of the company, even when it comes at the hand of a well dressed, slick executive.

 

[fsskier]

A quick survey of failed companies.....fraud, huge distortions of profits resulting in incredible pay and bonus's, then when the lies are caught the company is broke and the stockholders lose all. Enron, Countrywide, etc... Remember Ken Lay and Skillings claiming they were not responsible, they just sign the paperwork??

Stockholder initiatives to limit executive pay are quickly trounced, I know of no stockholder initiatives to greatly increase the top pay.

Anyone should be aware that pay (greed) at the top has increased the top pay from 60 time to over 1000 times the average workers pay.

Sadly it is often a fraud....Countrywide execs knowingly sold bad loans, promoted them, eliminated any real credit checks and wrote so many loans that they received well over 250 million in bonus's. Then, when the loans failed Countrywide went broke, losing over 70 BILLION.

Yeah, you guessed right, the execs still kept their fraudulently earned bonus. One..... with a 100 million bonus got a 5 million dollar fine from the SEC.

If I robbed a bank... and got 10 grand, then got caught would the courts take 500 bucks from my haul and send me on my way??

 

[Tempest]

""Executives do make to much money, but it is not just oil companies.""

Quote:
The real question, then, is: Why do other people choose to pay corporate executives so much?

One popular explanation is that executive salaries are set by boards of directors who are spending the stockholders' money and do not care that they are overpaying a CEO, who may be the one responsible for putting them on the board of directors in the first place.

It makes a neat picture and may even be true in some cases. What deals a body blow to this theory, however, is that CEO compensation is even higher in corporations owned by a few giant investment firms, as distinguished from corporations owned by thousands of individual stockholders.

In other words, it is precisely where people are spending their own money and have financial expertise that they bid highest for CEOs. It is precisely where people most fully understand the difference that the right CEO can make in a corporation's profitability that they are willing to bid what it takes to get the executive they want.

http://townhall.com/columnists/thomassowell/2007/01/23/the_greed_fallacy/page/full/

Reality says otherwise.

 

[Tempest]

Originally Posted By: antiqueshell
It would be great if there could be a "community owned" refinery.

I wonder if this has ever been done before, of course it would have to make a profit, but only enough to keep the equipment in good shape and pay the employees, unlike corporate owned units that need to please greedy shareholders.

I'm interested.


In the situation that you speak of, the employees become the "greedy shareholders". And what makes you think the "employees" won't be just as "greedy" about their return on investment than will any other person?

Get a bunch of people together, along with their own money, and purchase this equipment, and then go out and get the permits, insurance, experts, etc. to get this equipment up and running.

At which point, you become an oil speculator.

 

[PandaBear]

Co-op or for profit org debate aside. I'd stay the heck away from any non exploration part of the oil business. Refinery is a high capital, high liability, low popularity, low profit business (in the US, at least) and there is a reason the big oils are unloading these downstream units and focus on the up stream (exploration, drilling, etc).

Hint: those pretty charts that says oil companies only make little to no profits on their businesses? They are everything excluding the drilling and pumping, but including everything from refining and distribution (gas stations).

 

[Tempest]

Quote:
Hint: those pretty charts that says oil companies only make little to no profits on their businesses? They are everything excluding the drilling and pumping, but including everything from refining and distribution (gas stations).


Got a link for that? I would like to read more.

 

[PandaBear]

Originally Posted By: Tempest
Got a link for that? I would like to read more.


It was in one of the chart from a "politikal debate" that got locked. I'm not sure where to look for.