f13.net

An article about it here:  http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2008/02/19/america/Refinery-Explosion.php

Basically, the refinery in Big Spring, about 30 minutes from here, had a massive explosion today.  No reason yet, but considering it's been around since 1929 originally, I'm sure something finally broke at a bad time.  I don't think it handles enough volume to cause any prices to rise on a large scale, but speculation around the office today was that locally at least, we're likely to be paying more at the pump in the next few days. 

I grew up in the area.  That refinery was ancient when I was a kid.  They have all kinds of problems over the years there and in Abilene from various aspects of trouble (worn parts, loaded tanker truck runs off road, etc).  Honestly, it probably isn't much news to worry about ;-)

Was it terrorists?

Up here everything sends our gas up. We're at $1.10/litre. No idea why, but we're up there.

Don't you people understand they can't afford to make modern facilities? How would they post record profits quarter after quarter if they reinvested in the infrastructure? Sheesh.

No kidding. I don't know what part of Capitalism America you guys grew up in, but around here it's all about share price and has nothing to do with employee safety, company integrity, customer satisfaction, or any of those other words they put in company mission statements.

*snort*. There's more reasons than that -- you see, a lot of those plants are grandfathered in under enviromental laws. They don't have to, you know, stop spewing carcinogens and poisons (we're not even talking shit like C02 -- we're talking immediately nasty shit) in the air unless they "significantly upgrade their facilities".

Oddly enough, any upgrade they make they swear isn't "major" and don't need to stop spewing shit into the air over. It doesn't help that for most of the 90s, enviromental compliance had a hefty does of "volunteer compliance". (I shit you not -- it was one of the things Governor Bush pushed. We'd clean up our air by asking the worst pollutants to "Please fix it", which they'd totally agree to do, even though there was no law, no testing, no enforcement mechanism, or really anything other than the "please").

This will probably get this thrown into politics, but if we were *really* concerned about pollution, we'd start building a whole lot more nuclear plants, and ease up on the red tape bullshit it takes to build em.

Funny how they produce very little polution, and the waste can be either reused/buried/shot into space, yet still aren't "green" enough.

Well...
(http://crop.mur.at/g7/bigbrother/2005/bbn58/tschernobyl.jpg)

We should all vow to never build anything that has failed in Russia, just to be safe.

Well ...
(http://www.coxandforkum.com/archives/TheOligarchs-X.gif)

This waste that can be reused, buried and/or shot into space... we tend not to do it. Why? It costs too much, so we're still waiting for the astronomically expensive federal programs to start moving the mountains of radioactive waste. Once the cost of building power plants, maintaining them safely, decommissioning them and disposing of waste gets factored into the energy price and paid for by the industry's customers and not the taxpayer, will there be any buyers?

Way too expensive. We'll just pay billions to middle east dictators we like and trillions to fight dictators we don't (overtly and covertly) and stick with a oil. Because we're fucking smart.

Not like those stupid French surrender monkeys.