Industry committee  No, I don't know that, but that wouldn't affect... If Shell believed it was prudent, safety-wise and other things--and they're pretty conscious of those kinds of matters--then it wouldn't bother us from a deal standpoint. We'd do a deal. It wouldn't affect the deal. They'll find alternate sources of supply to keep the customers, because customers are what we want.

Industry committee  No, it will not be. That money, as we discussed with Shell, would be what we received from members of the committee as expressions from various sources with whom they discussed providing funds for the transaction, so that a combination of support from our parent company, from our own resources and these other sources, would have been available.

Industry committee  I'm not trying to be cute this time; I'm saying that more than likely, the inventory requirements of Shell will go down as they get closer to closing, and then they'll be very little. But let's say it's $400 million. We'll have a working capital financing facility for that. We'll put up $100 million or so of equity, but we'll borrow the other $300 million.

Industry committee  No.

Industry committee  I'm going to assume that you don't want me to repeat what I've already said about our interests, and I won't. We want to buy refineries. It's a stated corporate objective. This is a refinery that was presented to us as being for sale.

Industry committee  That's a pretty enormous question. Our plans would have been to accomplish a completing of the capital expenditure program that needed to be made in as efficient and expeditious a manner as possible and returning it to generating as soon as possible, and then free cashflow.

Industry committee  Let's assume that in September of 2009 Shell believed we were a very credible buyer and there was some chance the deal would close with us; then it's possible that the turnaround could have been done on that basis.

Industry committee  I think what we said was that we would not pay a purchase price for a closed refinery. I think your characterization of the purchase payment and the turnaround combines a couple of concepts that I don't think I spoke to. I said we wouldn't want to pay for a closed refinery. We wouldn't pay for a closed refinery.

Industry committee  Yes. I don't have any problem with the committee having any of the communications. It doesn't matter to me.

Industry committee  To commence discussions, we just have to have somebody who gives us a call and says they're ready to convene a group to talk about it. We're available to discuss the situation again.

Industry committee  I think they conducted themselves on a commercially reasonable basis. There were times when they asked for things, and if I were a seller I might ask for the same things. When I didn't hesitate to say no, their positions were more modified as a result of negotiations and the to and fro of all that.

Industry committee  I take it I just got thrown under the bus.

Industry committee  You need the employees to operate the business, right? You need the people. You need the union people and you need the administrative people. We didn't get to the point, in 30 days, of being able to...we never met a single employee of the refinery, never. There wasn't time. We were trying to do due diligence in the virtual data room, to try to get an understanding of the business.

Industry committee  Well, it's time and circumstance. I'm not trying to pick peas with you, but we didn't make an offer; we expressed an interest at a certain price level--since the lawyers would have a problem with the word “offer”. We're prepared to move it to that level, but it's not there now.

Industry committee  --that that would have been done. You didn't have time to do the turnaround. So you had a closed facility. We're not going to pay the purchase price for a closed facility, and we never got to the stage of saying, okay guys, let's agree that we've got a closed facility... Shell had an alternative use here.