What about the sour crude? They never touch that stuff because of the sulphur content.
I think its a refinery issue right now. Until we build more refineries we will continue to see tight supply.
I have not seen long gas lines. I hope that people realize that they don't need to top off their tanks every mile or so.
Yes, refining is the limiting factor in the US for gasoline... but refining isn't what's causing 70 bbl pricing.. market manipulation is.
Prices at the pump are going to go up for a while as the refineries in LA are offline.
Again though, this is not something that affects CRUDE prices...
When CRUDE oil from the low hanging fruit (like the middle east) truly begins to run out, and prices hit the 60 or 70 bbl range from that, and have no chance at all of ever going down (a true supply crunch) shale oil will become profitable to tap.
Right now though, oil is artificially at 70bbl, its a bubble and its going to go back down to 30-40 bbl.. its just a matter of if, just a matter of when. Everyone in the oil business knows this. Every hedge fund in america is putting money into oil futures, driving it up, just like they did tech stocks... and when it pops, its going to pop hard, just like tech stocks.
When the true tipping point occurs on the easy to get at oil, that's when Shale and other reserves will become profitable and tapped... but right now, we are not at that point.