Would building more oil refineries in the USA lower gas prices?
As I understand it the oil companies would love to build new refineries and have been wanting to for decades but the environmentalist and the government has been blocking every attempt. If the government would get out of the way more refineries would be built and yes more refineries would help with gas prices since cost is just not based on the price of oil but the supply produced by the limited refineries. Of course even if a new refinery started get built today, I heard it takes like 7 years to get a refinery built and up and running so it will not help anytime soon. We messed things up for 30 years and now we are going to pay the price. Another thing the government could is stop having every state requiring different gas blends. Every state has their own admission regulations and that means different gas. California requires a different gas mix than say Kansas. Having to produce different blends for winter and summer and state to state slows down production of the already overburden
Oil companies cannot do it due to environmental impacts. There are a number of things that can be done about gas prices. The problem is that there are political, environmental, and legal issues that would have to be overcome to make it happen. First, we need to reduce dependence on imported oil. As a world wide commodity, changes in oil demand anywhere in the world will impact our prices here. We could reduce oil imports by increasing the use of ethanol. Currently something like 25% of the US corn crop goes to this. However, the downside is that this takes corn out of the stockpile for food (both human and animal feed), which is currently causing famine to break out around the world. We could expand domestic supply, but hat means drilling for oil off the Gulf coast and in a part of ANWAR, which has environmentalists up in arms. Second, we could improve the distribution of fuel in the US. Currently, there are dozens of gas blends, all mandated by law. It is a tricky thing to supply just
Listen I would defend anything that would make us less dependent on foreign oil,but there is another problem here as well.If we build these refineries in the US,being the number two pollutant of emissions in the air, causing global warming behind China.I would have a real problem there because that is what is causing the ice caps to melt, and blocking the suns heat from escaping back into the atmosphere,so that is a problem its like damn if you do and damn if you don’t,and since out idiot president took his sweet time recognizing this,and the Kyoto,accord we are way behind in catching up with other industrialized countries aren’t we!
