[skeeter]

This is the first time I've heard this - in addition to the first time in recent memory I've seen the MSM defend oil companies.

Oil is a fungible commodity - I didn't think it mattered who or where it was pumped.

[Seaplaner]

Skeeter, ya beat me.

(Great minds...)

.

[Yardstick]

Here's what the article says about fungibility:

Historically, West Texas International crude has cost more. So nobody bothered building the necessary pipelines to carry it beyond the nearby refineries in the Midwest, parts of Texas and a handful of other places.

Now that the premium oil is suddenly very inexpensive, refiners elsewhere can't get their hands on it.

"It's so cheap," said Lynn Westphall, the senior VP of external affairs at San Antonio-based Tesoro, which owns a half dozen refineries on the West Coast and Hawaii. "But you can't just build a pipeline to everywhere. We know we can't get it."