|
Yes, petro and electricity work in similar ways. If you remember the NE blackout a few years back, it was partially due to a failure in the interchange system. One major distributor in Ontario had some difficulties that caused a brownout condition, this was quickly countered by either Detroit Edison, or the power company in Buffalo (they couldn't be sure at the time, and it may have been both). This is why it's a power grid, it interconnects facilities. The problem is that once the coniditons were "balanced" other problems crept up in the way that the interconnects worked, and power was being hemhoragged somewhere along the line, which led to a complete failure of the system. NERC has been pushing new requirements to help prevent this on the technology side of things, and from the small amount of NERC assessments I've done, I'd say it's helping at least some.
As for fuel, as mentioned above, it all gets put into the pipeline, regardless of where it comes from. Even American oil gets pushed through the same pipeline. So the fuel you pump may be 5% American, 50% Venezualan and 45% Saudi. Who knows. The problem with this is it completely drives cheaper business. There is no reason to get, say, Venezuelan oil instead of Saudi oil if Ven charges $0.02 more per barrel. Why? Because you're paying more, but the overall picture doesn't change much. If a LOT of companies did that, then a change could be made, but since many petro companies in the US are owned by foreign oil vested countries, that would likely never happen.
|