“US refining industry from Domestic to a Global Venture…”

Netherlands

General elections in the Netherlands shall be held on the 15th March to elect all 150 members of the House of Representatives. The elections in the Netherlands will set the tone for the elections in France and in Germany and are in the last week of campaign. According to the latest poll published on Friday, the Freedom Party would get 25 seats in the 150-seat parliament while the Liberals 24 seats. The gap between the two front-runners and other parties is narrowing with the Christian Democrats and Democrats 66 each gaining three seats on the week, with 21 seats and 17 seats respectively while that of GroenLinks also having 17 seats. The European Commission projects the GDP (Gross Domestic Product) in the Netherlands to be 2 percent in 2017, surpassing the 1.6 percent forecast for the euro area. The Dutch unemployment shall fall to 5.2 percent next year, compared with 9.6 percent within the Euro countries.

Oil and the US

The US refining industry has moved from one focusing domestically to a global venture in the past five years filling the gaps by struggling refiners such as Latin America, Africa and Asia. According to data from the Energy Information Administration, in 2016 US companies exported a 3 million barrels a day of refined products, which is more than double the 1.3 million barrels ten years ago. A decade ago the US reported annual net imports of crude and refined products of 12.4 million barrels a day while last year it received a net 4.8 million barrels a day which is the lowest since 1985. In the late 2016 the US exported more crude and refined products to Latin America than it imported from the region. For example Mexico , has relied on the US for its gasoline last year for nearly 50 percent of its total consumption in view that refineries operated by the Petroleos Mexicanos, the state owned oil company have failed. In this regard, the US is filling just filling a gap in Mexico. The same applies to countries like Brazil to Nigeria whereby US refiners are taking advantage of the lack of local refining capacity.

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