Get ready for volatile gas prices Author: 21132 Category:(Interesting) Created:(1/24/2002 3:56:00 AM)
This post has been Viewed (529 times) Consolidation of refining business sets stage for spikes
In the late 1990s, independent gas-station owners began complaining that the tank farm, in Niles, Mich., 90 miles east of Chicago, had become a choke point, making it difficult to get competitively priced gas, especially in northwest Michigan. The major companies control not just the storage facility, but also 69 percent of Wolverine Pipe Line Co., which brings in one-third of Michigan's gasoline, mostly from the Chicago area.
Alleging that Wolverine was charging exorbitant pipeline rates for any company that didn't own storage space in Niles, Quality Oil Co., a family-owned independent retailer based in Holland, Mich., filed a protest with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission in August 1999. In May 2000, a Marathon Ashland official told Michael D. Swan, Quality Oil's general manager, that the joint venture had no need, want or desire to allow Quality to use its tanks at Niles, according to testimony by Swan in March 2001 in the FERC case.
For some, though, it was too late. At the end of July, Ken Gillette, owner of Four Star Service Stations in Grand Rapids, Mich., shut his seven outlets, blaming shrinking supply for independents. Mergers had whittled his suppliers from five companies to two, he says. We won't be the last to go under, he predicts.
read the rest in my post here from 2002,
http://www.unsolvedmysteries.com/usm213748.html ADM.The link is to a story i posted here in 2002 about gas prices going up, thank Rony.
How it changed my life:Thought it was interesting something i shared is happening now? What do you think?
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