Fuel costs are roughly one third of expenses and WTI has climbed back up to the mid-nineties per barrel so the spiral of fare increases and capacity reductions will continue making travel even less tolerable than it already is.
It increased its overall refining capacity by more than half when it acquired a 50, 000-barrel-a-day facility in Tulsa, Okla. that Texaco had shut down.
If built as planned, Shell's two GTL plants (one scheduled to open in 2008-09 and the second in 2010-11) will have a combined daily capacity of 140, 000 barrels, as compared with Sasol's two 34, 000-barrel-a-day plants in Nigeria and in Qatar.