It does smell like some sort of textbook ENRONISM, by any means, create a shortage then blame it on old equipment.
Don't you think that with all those profits the oil co could build a few reffineries a year, heck even 2 a year would not be luxury, and bessides most of america's petroleum comes from Canada.
The situation is starting to reek big time. hey isn't big time Cheney's nickname. Doh!

It certainly is true of oil, since it is a product with an inelastic demand curve, that shortages increase short-term profits. So oil companies would have motivation to systematically underinvest.

But there is an other explanation no more rosy. There was a lovely piece in the Economist recently about how the people who worked at BP's Texas City refinery were sure something bad was going to happen before the big fire that killed twentysomething and injured over 100 more. (That's a lot, considering that refineries generally do not have many people working at them.) The reason was that upper management simply hacked away at the maintenance budget until things blew up. It was just money to them. And less money spent on maintenance always seemed better. It has been argued that upper management would have given the necessary money had there been a push-back, but the Texas culture did not operate that way. "No maintenance budget, Sir. Yes. Sir." Reminds us of other stuff...

In any case, a refinery blew up not because the result of blowing up would be greater profits, but because it was assumed that maintenance was a sort of luxury. It didn't matter. My guess is that refineries that are breaking down are suffering from the same kind of management laxity. Nobody wants to invest in new refineries. And nobody wants to pay to keep old ones going. Why? because there is not much money in refining. The big money is in pumping the oil out of the ground.