We can put a man on the moon BUT we cannot build a refinery.

[dumpster56]

Maybe you anti government guys are right. The government cannot do anything right. Then again how much would it cost to build a good sized refinery since there seems to be plenty of crude oil just not enough refinery capacity. 5 Billion? 10 Billion? How much are we spending in Iraq?

Then how about big business, why are they not building any new refineries?

 

[grumpy]

Well, we USED to be able to put a man on the moon (it has been almost 35 years since Apollo 17) and we USED to be able to build a refinery (don't know how long ago the last one was built in the US).

 

[mickj]

29 years ??

CorpWatch : US: No New Refineries in 29 Years

 

[justin]

I think Branson (the Virgin conglomerate guy) was trying to scrape up $2 billion for a refinery. I'm sure the capital is available (either in-house at Big Oil, or from the capital markets), the problem is where to put it (if we're talking the US).

 

[bpp3]

I thought it went, "If they can put a man on the moon, why not all of them?"

 

[dumpster56]

I think Branson (the Virgin conglomerate guy) was trying to scrape up $2 billion for a refinery. I'm sure the capital is available (either in-house at Big Oil, or from the capital markets), the problem is where to put it (if we're talking the US).

New Orleans. Not much left in that flooded area.

 

[RedHawk]

New Orleans. Not much left in that flooded area.

So what happens to the refinery when the next hurricane comes?

 

[Gumby]

Money is not the issue at all. The regulatory and legal environment is so hostile that it just can't be done. You end up fighting the NIMBY people forever, not to mention the BANANA people (Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anything).

 

[Rustic23]

My guess is you could put one in Texas. Problem is that Texas has almost 1/3 of the nation's capacity. The BP plant in Texas City produces 2.5% of the U.S. supply, enough to fill a tank car every 7 seconds. Needless to say, no shortage in Texas, unfortunately that is not where a refinery is needed, and I think Gumby is right, to put it anywhere else, would be a lawyers full employment act.

 

[justin]

I'd propose Yucca Mountain, Nevada. Hey, a refinery is definitely a couple of steps up from a nuclear waste storage facility, right?

 

[loosechickens]

Not to mention the pesky fact that the oil companies don't WANT to build new refineries. They are happy with their profits, are staring down the specter of peak oil....they like things just fine the way they are. The regulation stuff, while burdensome, as is the NIMBY effect, is mostly a red herring. If the desire was there, it would be done.

 

[chinaco]

You just think they put a man on the moon. I was all filmed in the Nevada desert!

 

[Danny]

not to mention but I will the $500+ BILLION put down the Iraq rathole. They could of built a bunch of refineries and then leased them to the refinery outfits. Darn it!

 

[haha]

I think one possibility is that the companies who might build refineries- which includes companies like Valero and Tesoro which have no upstream stake at all-do not expect sufficient crude to be available in America long enough to amortize the very high cost of a modern refinery, including dealing with NIMBY lawsuits, environmental challenges, etc. Not to mention that the government may at anytime change the gasoline tax structure, impose punitive taxes, etc.

Increasingly the crude we used to get from other than North American sources will be refined at or near to the source and arrive in our ports as product.

Ha

 

[dumpster56]

not to mention but I will the $500+ BILLION put down the Iraq rathole. They could of built a bunch of refineries and then leased them to the refinery outfits. Darn it!

Uh Oh.

Now if I said that someone would call me out on it.

Man I agree with your post DanTien. But we are fighting the terrorists there!!

How much more of GWs BS do we have to listen to. How many more months are left with this guy?

 

[Rick S]

Uh Oh.

How many more months are left with this guy?

Backwards Bush - Home of the Original Bush Countdown Clock Keychain!

..... but who's counting....

 

[FinanceDude]

How much more of GWs BS do we have to listen to. How many more months are left with this guy?

If you troll any more, you'll be a charter boat captain on the Great Lakes........

One acronym is the main reason WHY we haven't built a refinery since 1970...........the E.P.A.

 

[samclem]

I like the Yucca Mountain idea. If a place is gonna be the burial place for high-level nuclear waste, why not get max utility from the place you've written off already? Oil refineries would be good. Also any production of nasty chemicals. We could relocate our biohazard research labs there. And, if we put all this nasty stuff in a ring, the center point would be a good spot for the facility we'll eventually build to replace the one at Gitmo.

 

[cute fuzzy bunny]

If you troll any more, you'll be a charter boat captain on the Great Lakes........

You know, this 'ignore list' thing is a lot less effective if people keep quoting...

 

[Ed_The_Gypsy]

It works like this: There is no need for entire new refineries, which are huge and very expensive and would take forever to get permitted. The pattern is to debottleneck existing refineries, one unit at a time. Just build what you need. Even the Canadians aren't going to build a whole new refinery. They ARE building 'upgraders', which reduce the viscosity of bitumen and heavy oil so that it can be processed in a standard refinery. The limitation at the moment is pipeline capacity to bring the upgraded bitumen (known as synthetic crude oil, or SCO) to the refinery.

Black Oil Ed

 

[mb]

Ed, is correct.

I think that the statistic about no new refineries is misleading. I worked for an oil company in the late 70s. Since then they have not built any new refineries but they have doubled the capacity of some of their existing refineries.

Despite that I suspect that refining capacity in the US has grown at a slower pace than demand. (I'm to lazy to research it.) In addition to the regulation the other important factor that I think that has contributed to that is that that both oil and gas prices have been very cheap for a long time. In the 80s and 90s I don't think that it made economic sense to invest it a lot of new refining capacity.

MB