Investment in New Refineries is Booming Overseas

In more bullish news for Graham (GHM) the Wall Street Journal had an article today about a surge in investment in new refineries overseas.

Here are few of my favorite quotes:

"About 100 projects representing as much as 12 million barrels a day of added refining capacity, most of them outside the U.S., could be online by the end of the decade, according to Wood Mackenzie, a consulting firm based in Edinburgh, Scotland."

"European companies such as Repsol YPF SA and ENI SpA also are bullish on refining. "We think there has been a structural shift in the refining business," says Pedro Fernández Frial, Repsol's director of downstream business development."

"To be sure, ConocoPhillips, among others, is investing several billion dollars in refinery upgrades and increased capacity. One of the company's main objectives: to reconfigure its plants to handle so-called heavy, sour crude, which is less expensive than sweet crude."

Bottom-line: Graham (GHM) remains the only pure-play for investing in the refinery construction boom, specifically the worldwide need to reconfigure plants to handle sour crude.

You can access the full WSJ article by clicking on the link below (may require subscription):
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB113573099706532571.html?mod=home_whats_news_us