One can't blame the energy industry for taking this stance.
U.S. energy executives told Jennifer Granholm that shuttered crude oil refineries won’t restart, Valero’s Chief Executive Joe Gorder said on Tuesday.
. . .
Limited U.S. refinery capacity—and perhaps more critically, refinery capacity in specific U.S. geographic areas, known as PADDs—has spared worry in the United States over high gasoline prices and energy security.
US refinery run rates were north of 90% for much of the summer, according to the EIA’s Weekly Petroleum Status Report.
Shuttered refineries unlikely to start back up are the latest nail in the U.S. refinery coffin. In June, Chevron CEO Mike Wirth posited that there would never be another new refinery built in the United States.
“Building a refinery is a multi-billion dollar investment. It may take a decade. We haven’t had a refinery built in the United States since the 1970s. My personal view is that there will never be another refinery built in the United States,” Wirth said at the time.
Oil and gas companies would have to weigh the benefits of committing capital ten years out that will need decades to offer a return to shareholders “in a policy environment where governments around the world are saying ‘we don’t want these products to be used in the future,’” Wirth added.
There's more at the link.
Disastrous though this might be for the nation, one has to see it from the oil companies' point of view. They know that the Biden administration is hell-bent on destroying their industry, going "green" and turning to renewable sources of energy. They have no certainty that, if the next administration reverses those priorities, they won't be restored by the following administration. That being so, how can they justify spending hundreds or thousands of millions of dollars on repairing and upgrading existing refineries, much less building new ones? Their shareholders would (quite rightly) accuse them of fiscal malfeasance, and sue them into the gutter. Such investments take years to bear fruit, financially and otherwise, and must go on bearing fruit for decades to justify their enormous cost. Since decades of use can't be guaranteed, thanks to our feckless, reality-deficient, energy-ignorant politicians, such investments can't be described as anything but unrealistic.
The fact that renewable sources of energy have never successfully made up for the loss of conventional sources (e.g. power stations, refineries, nuclear power plants, etc.) that have been closed, is neither here nor there as far as the Biden administration is concerned. They appear to believe that if they decree it must be so, then it shall be so. I wonder if any of them ever heard the apocryphal tale of King Canute and the tide? If they have, they clearly didn't learn anything from it.
As a result of the Biden administration's disastrous energy policies, we now have less than a month's supply of diesel and related fuels in the USA. Heating oil is already being rationed in the north-east, where it's an essential home heating resource, and diesel distributors in the southeast are warning their customers to order early if they want to get the best prices. Since heating oil and diesel are part of the same refining stream (along with jet engine fuel and other distillates), the impact of these shortages can't help but damage our economy even further. If diesel prices continue to rise and/or diesel shortages become commonplace, our trucking industry will grind to a halt - and there goes our major food distribution network.
And all this is directly and immediately attributable to the energy policies of the Biden administration. Congratulations, Joe!
Peter
11 comments:
It really is annoying that the demonization of oil is based on sketchy science. When they cherry-pick urban temperature stations, lower the past recorded temperatures so that current ones look higher and close down discussion with inane statements like, “the science is settled” you know you’re dealing with a cult.
Navajo refining in Artesia, NM just finished their new "bio-diesel" addition to their refinery. bio-diesel is not a financially feasible endeavor. However, gov't money made it happen. Sigh.
Thankfully I have a landlord who likes me so much that she topped off my oil tank a few months ago on her dime.
There's a small part of me that actually wants the wells to run dry, because that should finally wake the American people the fuck up.
I have idly speculated on the possibility of redneck pirate refineries in a remote barn somewhere remote. Not that I know any actual pirates, really.
Most people, including industry executives who should know better, apparently don't know about the new small refineries that have come online recently - there are a couple that have been approved and built recently in the Dakota's. But overall he is correct. When I worked in the industry 20 years ago, they expected to not have any substantial new facilities and were working on increasing output at existing facilities.
Otherwise, I agree with the article.
This reminds me of the saying "Democracy dies to thunderous applaui" though in this case it isn't democracy but civilization itself as it is deliberately starved of the resources needed to sustain it.
I read some thesis a while back that stated, "If we go back to producing no CO2 and other bad things; then our society will be slam back in the 1830's..."!
The lack of refining is 'part' of the problem in California... And India managed to get one built in less than a year, with no problems!
The DOE needs to purge itself of any supporters of the Great Reset and the net zero carbon movement. It is inherently immoral and unethical to use government to force energy market decision-making away from the the fuels and methods freely chosen by the private sector. First, the bureaucrats are likely wrong in their understanding and assumptions. Second, it isn't any of their fucking business. If I want to drive a diesel or gas powered ICE vehicle, and someone wants to create and sell me that fuel, it isn't any legitimate business of Washington DC to get involved. That's between me and Exxon-Mobil, or Chevron, or whomever.
How, oh how will AlGore and Leonardo Diario fuel their biz jets, to get to Switzerland, and Davos, to tell us how we should live?
Why would a corporation sink hard cash into new capabilities, when they can use the lack of same to justify bending consumers over an oil barrel and making them squeal like Ned Beatty in Deliverance at the slightest provocation?
The wind blew? Raise prices.
It's Thursday? Another ratchet up.
The guy at the north gate has diarrhea? Time to raise prices.
Summer gas? Winter formula? Pumpkin Spice gas for the holidays? Raise prices, up, up, and away.
The corporate attitude is the same one used by Disney, and originally espoused by model businessman P.T. Barnum:
"Customers are suckers, and it's morally wrong to let a sucker leave with his money."
They use a fraction of the profits to buy politicians at bargain rates, thus ensuring the nearest thing to a self-greasing axle and perpetual motion machine possible, contrary to all laws of thermodynamics.
Change my mind.
Well, this is going to sound ridiculous. Maybe it is, but I'm wondering if the oil companies shouldn't just minimize output, crush the people, I know, we All would suffer, but it might get the
Stop oil, legislate gas cars away, electric cars are the way
Crowd to stop pushing for what will simply not ever work.
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