Why Don't We Have More Refineries?

[Galahad]

I don't think people were travelling much, then, especially by plane. Plus, I forgot, nothing negative that happens during the Bush administration has anything to do with his governance or the Republican congress. And Clinton is only to blame for the "bad" things that happened when he was in office.

As for Bush, the oil companies own him. They know they can do anything and he and the Republican Congress will not reign him in. Maybe Clinton was a much better international negotiator, and secured more oil from Russia, the Middle East, South America, etc. than Bush. Apparently some oil that used to come to us from South America is going elsewhere. I don't really care how Bush got us to this point, to be honest, he must address the problem, and one way to address it is to increase domestic refining capacity.

He should absolutely be focusing on our interests, rather than the interests of companies operating in Asia who want the refining by-products, and want the refining to be done in Asia. We need the gas. Refine the damn oil here.

Presidents don't negotiate to get oil from countries. Oil companies buy oil. You jump to a lot of conclusions about what my point is. Presidents don't cause this kind of thing to happen. They can't. Clinton didn't cause either the good or the "bad" things that happened in the economy during his presidency and Bush hasn't either. It really doesn't work that way. This is not a defense of Bush at all.

Said another, probably provocative, way. The world is not going to hell in a hand basket now and the world was not the land of milk and honey then.

 

[momof2inPA]

Presidents don't negotiate to get oil from countries. Oil companies buy oil. You jump to a lot of conclusions about what my point is. Presidents don't cause this kind of thing to happen. They can't. Clinton didn't cause either the good or the "bad" things that happened in the economy during his presidency and Bush hasn't either. It really doesn't work that way. This is not a defense of Bush at all.

Said another, probably provocative, way. The world is not going to hell in a hand basket now and the world was not the land of milk and honey then.

Maybe that's the problem. Do you mean in all those trips Bush has taken-- to African nations, to Mexico, Argentina, the Middle East, Russia, he hasn't been discussing oil? I mean, he calls it energy, I think we might even have an energy policy, but he doesn't know he's supposed to discuss trade with these other nations-- specifically the trade of oil, because these are the oil producing nations? That IS a problem.

 

[Charade]

Presidents don't negotiate to get oil from countries. Oil companies buy oil. .

But apparently local and state politicians do.

 

[salmoneous]

So why do you have to massively buy refined products in Europe?

Because we can. As long as we can get the refined products from elsewhere, we don't need to do it here. In the grand scheme of thing, does it matter if we import crude and refine it here, or just import the refined products?

50 years ago, we had enough car factories to produce all the cars we need in this country. Today, we don't. Do we have a car manufacturing crisis? Of course not - we just get the cars we need elsewhere. Nobody ever tries to blame the high price of cars on a lack of factories in the US.

Now, just to be clear, I'm talking strictly from a consumer standpoint here. From a jobs standpoint, we could be better of refining all our oil in this country, building all our own cars, making all our own clothes, etc. But that's a different issue. The issue here is that *consumer* problems are being blamed on a lack of refineries, and that makes no sense at all.

Also, I'm not talking about from a security standpoint. We would be a lot more secure if we could get all our own products without relying on anyone else. But we can't - we need imports, whether crude or refined.

Basic point - we haven't built refineries because we haven't needed to.