Abstract

A town betrayed

The article says that after a turbulent, two-year tussle with London-based British Petroleum Co. PLC (BP), Mayor David Berger has lost his quest to keep the 650-acre of BP-owned oil refinery in Lima, Ohio. The result is a city that now simmers in anger, feeling betrayed. This oil refinery, on a site established 111 years ago by John D. Rockefeller, is hardly unprofitable rendered obsolete by shifts in the production of gasoline. Instead, the Lima refinery is an efficient, state-of-the-art facility that is still cranking out thousands of gallons of automobile fuel a day as well as tens of millions of dollars in annual profit. BP has determined that the rate of financial return at Lima is not high enough and that the investment it makes in Lima could produce even more if used differently.