Refined

I got an email from our Representative yesterday touting the fact that the House Republicans have put forth H.R. 3089, The No More Excuses Energy Act. Among other things, the bill would "allow the issuance of tax exempt facility bonds for the financing of domestic use oil refinery facilities." Since this amounts to a subsidy for constructing oil refineries in the US, it is probably at least worth considering if this would have any downward effect on the price of gasoline.

As shown in the chart to the right, there isn't much correlation (coefficient of correlation is 0.05) between the level of refinery utilization and the price of gasoline, at least for the three years of data I could lay my hands on at the EIA.

Another data point is the current profitability of companies that refine oil. Since the price of gasoline is high, they must be making a mint, right? Wrong. Demand for distillates is down as Americans drove 1.4 billion fewer highway miles in April 2008 than in April 2007 earlier, according the Department of Transportation. Since the primary profit driver for a refining company is being able refine as many barrels of oil as possible, the reduced demand is killing them.

Although this analysis is full of holes (what about imported distillates? etc.), it does indicate that the cause of high prices at the pump now is probably not due to a shortage of refining capacity. If I can figure this out with 15 minutes of work, why is the US Congress still trying to subsidize refining? Could it be lobbying influence? Nah.

6 Cents

Almost unbelievably in this time of hysteria surrounding gasoline prices, the Virginia Senate passed a bill to raise gas taxes by $0.06. That is 1.5% of the retail price of gasoline right now.

According to the API (pdf), the surrounding states all have higher tax rates currently and this increase would bring us into line with them and still well below the national average of $0.494. Considering the funding shortfall in Virgina's transportation budget, this seems like a small price to pay. I'd rather pay the money to VDOT than Saudi but I'm sure politics will rule and we will do without new roads instead of forcing politicians to go on the record favoring a tax increase that is probably in our long term interest, no matter how small.

Frame

A couple more weeks and we have almost complete framing. Everything looks good and I like the way it is turning out. It makes the house look huge, even though we aren't adding that many square feet. We should be under roof next week and start getting the windows and doors in.

The next thing is to pick out a tub for the bathroom and other plumbing fixtures.

Shrinkage

There is some consternation out and about on how food and beverage manufacturers are trying to sneak one past the American consumer by reducing the sizes of their packages (and presumably charging the same price). While I'm not too happy about getting less ice cream, maybe this is a good thing? The last thing Americans need to be doing is eating super-sized vats of Country Crock.

I recently read that Australians are fatter than we are (good on ya, Aussie!) Maybe the shrinkage at the grocery store will help this trend continue.

Letters

I stumbled across FontStruct the other week but didn't have a chance to take a look at it until recently. If you ever wanted to make your own font, you now have no excuses. I hope to have a chance to make a few of my own and post them out there.

Numbers

I stumbled across this report (pdf) about the Roanoke region recently. It isn't thrilling reading, but if you are curious about the demographic and economic data about the area, it is worth a quick glance.

Population of Roanoke City in 2007: 90,902
Decline since 2000: -1.5%
Roanoke City median household income 2005: $33,501
VA median household income 2005: $54,207
Roanoke City with at least Bachelor's degree: 18.74%
VA with at least Bachelor's degree: 29.46%

The fact that the ratios between the income numbers and the Bachelor's degree numbers are just about proportional is telling. We don't need no education.

Hiatus

I've been crushingly busy with work the past couple of weeks and we've been in our typical early summer busy mode which limits my extra energy for writing anything on this weblog. Just to keep it from gaining cobwebs, I'm writing this quick post.

Part of that early summer busy mode was the Bath County Triathlon. The race was a lot of fun. We did it as a family team with my wife swimming, me cycling and my daughter running and finished in a respectable time. The weather was absolutely perfect and we had fun at a friends post-race party at the family farm in the beautiful countryside. The only downer was that a friend came down from NYC to do the race and had to scratch due to a rib injury.