[thackney]

I guess the “no new refineries” claim doesn’t mean anything to me. In those same 3 decades, we have expanded and upgraded our existing refinery to the point where the average output per refinery has doubled from 59.4 MBPD to 120.3 MBPD.

Number and Capacity of Petroleum Refineries
http://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/pet_pnp_cap1_dcu_nus_a.htm

We now produce more refined product than the country uses. Consequently we import more crude oil than we need and export the surplus refined products helping our trade balance keeping more jobs in the US.

At this point, building additional refineries will only result in either exporting more refined product, or shutting down existing refineries. We do not have a shortage of refineries for the total US.

[Redleg Duke]

Thanks for the information. I think the “no new refineries” thing is that the environmentalists have been delaying every new refinery and forcing the improvement of existing facilities. That is good that the latter occurred, but it certainly wasn’t the outcome they wanted.