John Felmy Quotations

When you take all those costs out you're not finding unreasonable profits for everything we have to do to get (gasoline) to consumers. These requests are just unfortunate.

We're feeling (the crunch) now, but the U.S. has been in this situation for the last five years because of a lack of energy policy, and we need to develop one now,

We're in uncharted territory. We haven't experienced something like this since the 1980's.

We're still calling on consumers to be prudent in their use of gasoline. It's just a complicated jigsaw puzzle we're putting back together.

The prices could go up, and consumption could go up, making bills even larger.

nobody wants to be the villain in the story.

What you have is an important set of steps in terms of these are high-temperature, high-pressure facilities. And that's if you have not had any damage, and we know from preliminary reports that's not the case.

We make 8-9 cents on the dollar, less than banks or pharmaceutical companies. It's a fair return for the risks we take.

It is important to do no harm. The worst thing Congress could do now would be to repeat the mistakes of the past by overriding the structures of the free marketplace (by) imposing new controls, allocation schemes, new taxes on industry or other obstacles.

Our companies don't set the price. The market sets the price.

Markets work, if you let them. Clearly, with $60 oil, anybody who can get a project into production and sell oil is going to be doing that.

I think most people would agree that two-thirds of the economic slowdown we've seen is due to higher energy prices, ... And with higher energy prices, consumers will either have to reduce savings rates ... or reduce consumption.

That would be the stupidest thing on Earth we could do. It would throw us back into the 1970s.

When you start intervening in a market, it starts you down a slippery slope of price controls, marketing manipulation and -- ultimately -- the bad energy policy that we suffered through in the 1970s.

What you've got are a whole series of requirements and processes and that takes days, if not weeks.

The real question is, What will consumers do? That's a key part of the equation.

We can't speak for each of the 170,000 gasoline stations nationwide, ... But it's clear that gasoline prices are up 29 cents a gallon because crude oil prices are up about 29 cents a gallon during the same period.

We've been producing record amounts of distillate fuel but what we've seen in ... New England, which is a primary consumer of heating oil, we've seen our inventories of primary storage shoot up to something like 50% above average.

We've had some good signs, we'll just keep working at it.

The reasons for high gasoline prices are very clear: the high cost of crude and the high cost of manufacturing gasoline. The idea that this is some sort of conspiracy is very unfortunate.

Those that can run it were running it and making a pretty good buck off it.

We are an industry already doing a lot. ... We're already investing vast amounts.

Eventually, if you don't fill up, we run out of storage room and that creates a supply backlog,

There's no windfall. That's the fundamental problem with that argument.

Right now, the short-term markets are going a little crazy. If there is little damage, they can reverse themselves.

Some people and politicians who have been attacking the industry seem to think that our companies are owned by space aliens. It's as though simply taking money from or criticizing a company is not going to affect millions of Americans who have invested in it.

As an economist, I can think nothing else.

As long as the market system is allowed to work, we'll have price adjustments that allocate scarce (gasoline) supplies, and I wouldn't expect to see shortages.

This is the biggest body blow to the petroleum supply system in history. What we're talking about is market competition in a situation where in the United States, we've lost at least 11 percent of our refining.

This is a cyclical business and so there is always someone in the supply chain who wins and someone who loses,

This is unfortunate rhetoric from politicians. We're a cyclical industry, earning a fair rate of return for everything we have to do to meet our energy needs, all the money we have to invest, all risk we have to take.

It's a stain on the industry that's unfair. It's just disappointing.

It was a mistake then, and it is still a bad idea. It drained $79 billion from the industry and reduced the rate of return for producing oil in this country.

It's more difficult to produce because it requires heavy significant financial investment in the refineries,

It's not sizable but any amount has gotten people nervous.

It may be possible to push production higher for very brief periods, but the decision to do so must be made by individual companies, which will not compromise the safety of workers.

It's a pretty big hit, ... There's no question there will be some very real market impact.

It's much more of a world market with oil.

Everyone knows how high prices have been and how volatile they are for petroleum products this year,

I've got grave concerns, ... I thought we had learned this lesson 25 years ago.

Things clearly have to get done on a government level to fix these issues.

The key thing that I can't answer is will consumers act appropriately. If they decide to rush the system, it can't handle it even in the best of times.

Increasing oil prices directly affects consumers. There are increases in transportation and in the cost of all other goods and services that use oil for production -- from heating a factory to building a road.

If you don't provide the relief, nothing will happen. The start-up costs are just too massive.

If you were to, for example, increase your ethanol usage to 20% of the fuel supply, you'd use 100% of the corn crop.

High oil prices are certainly a drag on the economy, ... Oil is taking money out of the pockets of consumers that could be spent elsewhere, increasing the cost of doing business and the amount of foreign exchange dollars that need be funneled overseas.

Gas prices have gone up, but so have crude oil prices.

The devil is in the details. We have a well functioning system now. It is a question of cost. Where is the product going to come from?

The first thing we need to do in response to these climbing prices is get our house in order. The U.S. needs legislation that addresses our energy problems, provides incentives for alternative energy, improves energy infrastructure, maximizes domestic resources and addresses the fact that the energy crisis we face now isn't going away.