US Oil Refineries vs. Foreign Oil Refineries

[Taco]

I got to thinking about the lack of new oil refineries in the USA. How do other developed countries compare with the number of refineries? Stricter rules/more or less red tape? More or less refineries?

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I got to thinking about the lack of new oil refineries in the USA. How do other developed countries compare with the number of refineries? Stricter rules/more or less red tape? More or less refineries?

One thing to consider… our refineries are set up to mostly refine foreign oil to make gasoline. To convert it to handle domestic oil which is sweeter than the foreign stuff would cost money. The government could have incentivized such a conversion to get us off of foreign oil decades ago and dithered instead. This whole subject is way more complicated than drilling and then refining our own oil and presto we are energy independent. It’s also way more complicated than blaming the guy in charge… I looked into this the other day and came away with the knowledge that mortal man cannot control the oil markets or change their trajectory. There are no switches to flip or permits to issue or anything like that to cause it to immediately correct.

Since we export a lot of our oil (remember we aren’t set up for sweet oil) it stands to reason that many foreign countries have the capability to refine our oil.

To be honest it was extremely stupid to not require our oil supply to be the primary source of oil we consume. Good planning would seem to support not being dependent on others for energy… one of the most important commodities there is.

This is the primary reason we need to get off of oil in general. Solar, wind and hydro are all domestic. You cannot import it or be dependent upon a country half way across the world.

[TC Talks]

It is the way the oil companies want it to be... They aren't as concerned with domestic oil policy as they are profits.