[pingman]

And then there’s the claim that the companies aren’t maintaining their refineries, letting them go, and not building new ones, to keep the price of refined goods up.

Sounds like balderdash to me.

[thackney]

And then there’s the claim that the companies aren’t maintaining their refineries, letting them go, and not building new ones, to keep the price of refined goods up.

We have spent billions upgrading and expanding our existing refineries. Combined with our falling demand, our refinery capacity is now noticeably larger than our refined product consumption.

Note: our total petroleum usuage is larger than the above graph, but that includes about 2.2 MMBPD of Natural Gas Liquids like propane, ethane, etc.

Click the graphs for the data links.