At the end of April, a struggling oil refinery called Trainer, near Philadelphia, was bought for $150m in a deal that would usually have garnered little attention. But while the acquisition itself might not have been unusual, the buyer – a subsidiary of Delta Air Lines – was. The takeover made Delta the first airline to purchase a refinery.
Delta’s chief executive, Richard Anderson, says it was an “innovative approach to managing our largest expense” – fuel – and that it would allow the company to shave $300m off its annual kerosene bill, which rose to $12bn in 2011, or more than one-third of its operating costs.
