turd rising : the floater, page-10

I actually work in one of their refineries so have first-hand knowledge of what goes on in there, their most recent upsets, and the state of their equipment. Working inside the industry you also get to know the state of other refineries - contractors are a great source of information because they know what goes wrong as they're there to help fix it, then they pass that information on to other refineries they go to! And you're right, parts of the refineries are always going to be upgraded but it's a bit like getting an old car and putting a new motor in it. Eventually there'll be something else to go wrong unless you overhaul the whole thing and that's just too expensive.

Budgets are tight - a few months before Xmas ALL our maintenance crews were told to go and there was NO maintenance to be done outside absolute emergencies so that this particular area of the refinery could fall within their budget for the year. Tight budgets means that scheduled maintenance is often put off until a later date, non-essential (according to someone??) work is put off, short-cuts are taken etc. And this often just means more breakdowns down the track so you're constantly chasing your tail with maintenance.

The media beat-up about refineries purposely running out of fuel to drive up prices is rediculous - Shell actually really ran out of premium unleaded due to plant breakdowns, and CTX last year was running out as well. This was due to unscheduled breakdowns - and I don't mean just a pump stopping - things do go very wrong and if production isn't stopped to fix these things then disasters can happen (as in people getting killed).

I suppose I'm just trying to bring a new light onto the topic from an inside perspective. I own shares and continue to buy through the employee scheme so if I didn't have any faith in the company I wouldn't be doing this. But I just don't want people to think that it's all so easy and the increases that have been seen in the past are automatically going to be replicated again. I just think that the easy money has been made - BUT, if Shell close down as is always rumoured, and other things could change as well, then maybe the sp will just double again?????