"Mike Rapoport" wrote in message
ink.net...

(You mentioned that refining capacity has grown despie the reduced number of
actual refineries)

(18.6 Mbbl in 1981 vs 16.8Mbbl today)

http://www.investors.com/editorial/I...0051010&view=1

/excerpt

Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., falsely claimed that the "major
oil companies haven't even tried to build one single new refinery in this
country in 30 years" and that they "do not really want to expand refinery
capacity because it would cut into their record-setting profits."

The fact is they increased capacity and use at least on a
refinery-by-refinery basis. In 1981, the U.S. had 324 refineries with a
total capacity of processing 18.6 million barrels of crude per day. Today
just 149 refineries have a daily capacity of 16.8 million barrels.

The refineries are doing more than ever, but their numbers are dwindling and
no new ones are being built. The reason is not greed, but cost and
regulations. From 1994 to 2003, the refining industry spent $47.4 billion
not to build new refineries, but to bring existing ones into compliance with
environmental rules. That's where those "profits" go.

The last refinery built in the U.S. was in Garyville, La., in 1976.

Twenty-nine years later, approval of a new refinery could require as many as
800 different permits.

And just where would you build it? After Hampton Roads Energy Corp. proposed
a refinery near Portsmouth, Va., in the late 1970s, environmental groups and
local residents fought the plan. After court battles in front of federal and
state regulators, the firm gave up and canceled the project in 1984.

/end excerpt