That makes it hard to ship gas across state lines, and shrinks the number of refiners that provide a particular blend of gas, giving each refiner more power.
Platinum refiner Johnson Matthey dropped 102p to £23.06 as third quarter profits fell 19% to £84.3m, hit by lower sales of catalytic converters for car exhaust systems in Europe and weak demand in Japan.
Singapore has no land for plantations but intends to be a big refiner of its neighbours' plant oils.Besides reducing fossil-fuel dependence and boosting trade balances, biofuels have another advantage: they create lots of jobs.
Executives at Neste, a big Finnish refiner, doubt Europe's output of biofuels can expand fast enough to meet the EU's target.
Sinopec, Asia's biggest refiner, is close to selling a $16 billion stake in its retail unit, a potentially lucrative opening for private investors.
Like every other part of the oil industry, refining is suffering from an acute shortage of building materials and skilled labour.Tesoro, an American refiner, scrapped one scheme last year because of rising costs.
Flush with cash from last year's spike in oil prices, and eager to expand, Russian energy groups such as Lukoil have already sniffed around Poland's second-biggest refiner, Gdanska.
According to Johnson Matthey, a refiner, the supply of platinum fell by 13% last year, to 175.4 tonnes.
It is one of the largest loans given to a Russian company.In a deal worth $4 billion—one of the biggest in Brazil Petrobras, the state-run oil company, and two partners announced a plan to buy Ipiranga, a fuel distributor and refiner.
In the same year Valero, an American refiner, bought Pembroke from Chevron for $730m.The efforts to squeeze more returns from Stanlow show how refining can pay.
Mitsubishi Oil, the seventh-biggest refiner, expects operating losses for the second year in a row.
