Political & Elections

Our sole refinery in the PNW (Anacortes) is down for 2 months due to fire and maintenance. Still no shortage of gas. Fuel oil is out-of-sight but nearly everyone has switched from resistent electric heat  and  fuel oil to natural gas and heat pumps. The Bonneville Power Administration has been very proactive in getting us off of relatively expensive power unto more efficient energy. Oregon has also been proactive in promoting home insulation in the form of state tax credits. You can now drive border-border in Oregon (350miles) and use only free electric charging stations. 

You betcha I am Green. I can't wait to get off Alaskan oil that is subsidized by the feds and pays Alaskan per capita dividends. 

It's impossible for refiners to get approvals to build new plants due to the regulations.  Really. 

Hand, fact, whatever you want to call it ... it's what you really need to address, lp, and dwelling on the apparent lack of speed simply isn't doing it. 

Forget whatever name the California Coastal Commission or it's like might be operating under these days, lawsuits funded by the greenies will follow you wherever you go, not to mention it'll be a new one, one that isn't grandfathered in underneath all the EPA rules.

Listening to the liberals you'd think there simply isn't any way a bunch of rich white guys can't geometrically expand their inherited money but the truth is, building a brand new, state of the green art refinery, deep in the heart of the environmentally enlightened, simply isn't one of them.

I'm Texan, so letting 'em run out of gas in a snowbank is just fine with me, btw.

SLS

I really doubt that refiners are not building refining capacity because of pollution controls. Doesn't seem to be any lack of gas or diesel. Its just more expensive because of geopolitics and geo-economics. 

As I said, there doesn't seem to be any hurry to build new refinery capacity. Since the rise in gasoline prices, has anyone increased their consumption of petroleum fuel or has decreased their gasoline consumption. USA seems to have plenty of refined products inventory, infact, on the high side of 5 year historical trends. 

http://money.cnn.com/2012/04/10/news/economy/refineries-gas-prices/index.htm?iid=Popular

BTW, would anyone like to live next to a new, improved version of a Nuclear Plant, a Refinery, a Coal burning electric plant? Remove the polution controls-laws-regulations and I am 100% positive, not one more plant will be built.