"Ash Wyllie" wrote in message
...
I've heard that US refineries are operating at damn near 100% of ALLOWED
capacity. Can anyone verify that?


It is 90%+ of installed capacity. Which leaves very little room for error.

In 1981, according to the National Petrochemical and Refiners
Association,
321 refineries pumped out 18.6 million barrels a day of gasoline. Today
only 149 refineries, run by 60 companies in 33 different states, pump
out
16.8 million barrels of gasoline daily - almost 2 million barrels a day
less. They are operating at 93 percent of capacity, well above the
industrial average, with little time left for maintenance and upgrades.

Tom Bray, Washington Times

Sounds "damn near" to me.

What about drillings? I recall (my memory started to go longggg before I hit
50) that the only new drillings are off shore, and that is so restricted by
EPA (and other alphabet soup) that it has to be an EXCEPTIONALLY GOOD
reading before they spend the money. Any idea of the ratio of cost of
drilling to cost of government paperwork and bureaucratic BS? :~)