Not in petrochemicals, but neither is this is this reporter. I get it, it's supposed to be a joke, but it's such a poorly executed one fraught with so many major components glossed over that it detracts from any humor the article could have had. When the Onion writes something, it's humor is wonderful because not only the wit is there but there are few if any inconsistencies even for pedants who dissect things such as I.

1000ppm of hydrogen sulfide surely can kill you. The work-around this is to take delivery of a barrel of "sweet" rather than "sour" crude. Even in the "sour form", you get "up to" 1000ppm. However, barrels 1) are sealed properly by institutions with safety regulatory agencies just like any other industry, and 2) to get H2S exposure at that rate, you'd have to effectively stick your head into a barrel and inhale directly. To calculate actual PPM you'd likely be exposed to, you'd have to evaluate the aromatic distribution of H2S. (see: Gas-Phase Reactions: Kinetics and Mechanisms, Chapter 2). The journalist is right about the insurance policies.

She later even mentions she has sweet crude. :facepalm:

>> My boss insists that I must factor in the cost of lost productivity for the many minutes spent on the phone with FedEx in an attempt to trace the package as it zigzagged across Manhattan. On that basis, I’m probably already in the red.

Bloomberg - I love your reporting for what it is. Tom crushes it in the morning. Alyx Steel makes poignant remarks. BBC doesn't try to be The Daily Show. Stick at what you're good at & don't try to be VICE. Especially for someone who reports on finance, she's overlooking so many things. Insurance she mentioned earlier but didn't bother to mention factor that capex. Storage is an opex (she mentions consignment venues (tech analogy: co-locating your servers) but those are fees she didn't factor in). In real life, if she's arbitraging US oil, the journo needs to be a CME member. For a March maturity date, a ~3 mo membership lease is $1k as an opex.

* Further reading:

"Petroleum and Gas Field Processing", et al. Chapter 7: Crude Oil Stabilization and Sweetening

"Gas-Phase Reactions: Kinetics and Mechanisms" V.N. Kondratie, et al. Chapter 2 (or there abouts).

Merck on pulmonary irritants: http://www.merckmanuals.com/professional/pulmonary-disorders...

CME fees: http://www.cmegroup.com/company/membership/membership-pricin...

Edit: To anyone who's downvoting me, by all means please respond (with some cordiality if you would), as to why! I tried to cite my sources properly, but if any professionals who deal with futures (especially crude oil, and even more so those who have taken delivery or performed the arbitrage she "simulated") see anything factually incorrect, I'm really happy to be corrected.

Edit 2: I responded as to why I found this article so aggravating below. Please read it before you down-vote me. It's comparable to how frustrated my tech friends and I get when television shows cross the threshold of comical technical inaccuracy and progress into a zone of visceral opposition. HN traditionally had a "Don't downvote people solely because you disagree with them" policy. My remarks are relevant to the article and (to my knowledge) factually correct.