Right. And would you want that unregulated refinery built upwind from
your hotel?? Didn't think so.

Ah, yes -- another person who apparently hasn't flown over most of the
country -- which, by the way is almost entirely VACANT. Of course you
wouldn't build a refinery in a populated area.

It's too bad all those existing refineries were shut down. It would
be a lot easier to expand those than to build new ones. By the way,
from 1975 to 2000 the EPA received exactly 1 permit request for a new
refinery. The oil companies haven't exactly been tripping over
themselves trying to build new capacity.

Wow, talk about confusing "effect" with "cause"! The plain and simple
reason there have been almost no applications is because the draconian
environmental rules have made building a new refinery a multi-billion-dollar
nightmare of paperwork, hearings, and a never-ending web of interlocking
regulations that would keep a fleet of lawyers busy for decades.

What new American oil fields have they been prevented from developing?

Here's a quote from 2005 -- when oil was at "record prices of $50/barrel":
************************************************** ************************************************** *********************
"America has no shortage of oil. Washington has a shortage
of political will to let American workers go get it."
- Chairman Richard W. Pombo

Washington, DC - As oil prices climb to record highs above $50 per barrel,
some have asserted that we are "running out" of this resource. In truth, we
are not running out of oil in America. We can safely increase domestic
production by at least 17.2 million barrels per day by 2025.

"America has no shortage of oil for the foreseeable future," House Resources
Committee Chairman Richard W. Pombo (R-CA) said. "Washington has a shortage
of the political will required to let American workers go get it. We have
not increased domestic supply in thirty years. As a result, our dependence
on foreign oil has skyrocketed to the point where we are sending $200
billion overseas to import this resource every year. At least a fraction of
that sum should be spent at home to increase supply, lower prices, and
create jobs."
************************************************** ************************************************** *********************
You might want to check this DOE document, which was the source of his
information: http://tinyurl.com/5fv3nj
It's even more pertinent today than it was in 2005.

Here again, from 1978 until 2007 the NRC received exactly zero
requests for nuclear plant permits. The problem isn't that the
industry is getting turned down. The industry isn't trying to build
new plants. The reason is that nuclear plants are so hideously
expensive, and the payback period is so long, that it is a huge
financial risk to build them.

Again, you've got the cart in front of the horse. The reason reactor costs
are prohibitive isn't because the technology is any big deal -- just check
out the way the Navy builds reactors for the fleet, without incident -- but
because the regulation of domestic reactors has been made purposefully so
convoluted that they CAN'T be built without literally spending years in
court, supporting another fleet of lawyers.

But before we ramp up the use of these, we need to
have a solution for long-term (10,000 years) storage of the
radioactive waste. Right now it's just sitting around at the existing
plants.

Another environmentalist-induced catastrophe waiting to happen. The safe
nuclear waste storage facility has been built (at a cost of billion$) and
has been ready for years -- but "environmentalists" (and I use the term
loosely) have the whole concept of long-term storage tied up in an endless
series of lawsuits. So, all of our ever-growing stockpiles of nuclear
waste continue to be stored unsafely at each power plant. It's criminal.

Sounds good, but where do you get the hydrogen??

Why, from the newly-built plethora of safe, non-polluting nuke plants that I
(as King) decreed -- of course!

:-)

I can see that you really want to believe that it is environmental
regulations that are causing these problems. That gives you a nice
boogey man you can rail against. But it is more complicated than
that.

I didn't say environmental regulations are "causing" the problems -- I said
over-regulation has made the problems virtually unsolvable. Bottom line:
Until these onerous agenda-driven regulations are relaxed, we will continue
to see our economy thrashed by ever-increasing energy costs.
--
Jay Honeck
Iowa City, IA
Pathfinder N56993
www.AlexisParkInn.com
"Your Aviation Destination"