As we head into the Memorial Day weekend, a lot of attention is being paid to the price of gasoline. This is no surprise since over 36 million travelers are expected to hit the roads across the country this weekend - at a time when prices for the crude oil used to make fuels are climbing.
As Hurricane Florence approached the East Coast this week, nearly two million residents throughout the Carolinas, Maryland and Virginia were placed under evacuation watch.
Hurricane Michael, currently graded as a Category 4 storm, made landfall on the Gulf Coast today, directly hitting the Florida Panhandle and potentially impacting more than 300 miles in the region.
In a tight refined product market it has been U.S. refiners that have stepped up. Our industry ran full-out for most of 2022 making sure American consumers, our domestic economic centers and our allies had enough gasoline, diesel and jet fuel to keep everyone moving. Our refining sector leads the world in liquid fuel production and is effectively doing more than any other to bring better balance to the global market.
Publicly owned companies, like many U.S. refineries, have a fiduciary responsibility (which is a legal obligation) to act in the best interest of their shareholders, and that extends to how companies spend their earnings. Often, earnings are spent on a combination of the following: direct dividends, stock buy back programs, paying down debt and capital investment projects.
AFPM President and CEO Chet Thompson issued the following statement in response to President Biden’s State of the Union address: "Using the State of the Union to politicize market fundamentals and single out stock “buy back” programs—while overlooking the fact that the Biden administration’s own policies discourage the reinvestment of earnings back into the U.S. liquid fuel supply chain—cheapens the dialog for everyone."
AFPM issued the following statement on the passage of California legislation that will empower the state’s unelected bureaucracy to impose an effective windfall tax and massive regulatory burden on the state’s remaining refineries. "...Add this legislative cocktail to the list of self-inflicted policy wounds for a state already bleeding people."