Gee, I bet you're one of those people that assumes that the years I worked at Texaco I got free or reduced cost gasoline.
Let me disabuse you of that notion.
By the way, owning a refinery does not guarantee a supply or even a lower cost supply. The OCAW (Oil, Chemical, and Atomic Workers union) is one of the strongest unions in the country. You might start out with a non-union refinery, but it wouldn't be for long.
Also, one of the reasons that the oil companies haven't increased capacity over the last 20 years is the up front cost of building/adding to a refinery. The cost is enormous and there is no guarantee in the current environment that the cost could ever be recouped. Even buying a used refinery--assuming there were any for sale--is a very costly proposition. And, if a refinery is up for sale in this day and age, it's because an oil company could not make it profitable--like the small refinery that Texaco used to have in Kansas somewhere. It wasn't close to any of the refinery's customers; so the cost of transporting product to the user ate up the profit.
The refineries that are anywhere near some place that AA flies are in use today or have been shut down because the cost of bringing them into regulatory compliance with today's laws is prohibitive. It's even too expensive to tear them down and use the land for something else. Though I can't think of anything you could do with the land within the fence of the average refinery. Years of accidental spills of various sorts has polluted the soil to the point it is black and shiny.
It's kind of like the good ole boy who thinks building a microbrewery in his garage will save him money on his beer. He's bankrupt before he even finishes getting all the licenses and governmental permissions he needs to start construction. Or, he runs the risk of having his house seized by the government for operating a still. The Dukes of Hazzard is not a realistic view of life.
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