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Originally Posted by VAg8r1
So it's Obama's fault. Once again, a picture being worth a thousand words, note when the reduction in the number of refineries began.
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see post #9 for documented expense of operating under this administration and how it has impacted the refinery business
highlights for you
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January 26, 2011) - The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the U.S. Department of Justice announced today that HOVENSA LLC, owner of the second largest petroleum refinery in the United States, has agreed to pay a civil penalty of $5.375 million and spend more than $700 million in new pollution controls that will help protect public health and resolve Clean Air Act violations at its St. Croix, U.S. Virgin Islands refinery. The settlement requires new and upgraded pollution controls, more stringent emission limits, and aggressive monitoring, leak-detection and repair practices to reduce emissions from refinery equipment and process units
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Three refineries, including two owned by Philadelphia-based Sunoco Inc. that have supplied about half of the gasoline, diesel and jet fuel, have already closed in just the past six months. They had lost nearly $1 billion over three years after shelling out $1.3 billion to comply with stricter EPA rules at a time when demand for gasoline fell and the cost of foreign crude soared.
Sonoco also worried that those regulatory costs would grow exponentially under the Obama administration through stiff noncompliance fines and other penalties that have hit other refineries. Its 2011 report filed with the SEC stated that: “Compliance with current and future environmental laws and regulations will require us to make significant expenditures, increasing the overall cost of operating our business, including capital costs to construct, maintain and upgrade equipment and facilities.” It went on to say: “To the extent that these expenditures are not ultimately reflected in our products or services, our operating results would be adversely affected.”
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Brady was trying to get Carlyle help from the administration on EPA permits, but the White House was uneasy about being seen as helping a private-equity firm while the Obama campaign was busy lambasting Mitt Romney’s Bain Capital. Brady contacted Vice President Biden and spoke by phone with Sperling, who said he talked to Obama.
“The president was in campaign mode banging on Romney for being a hedge fund guy. And here he was helping a hedge fund,” Brady said. “They didn’t want the publicity.” (Both Bain and Carlyle call themselves “alternative asset managers,” not hedge funds.)
Brady said Pennsylvania’s Republican Gov. Thomas W. Corbett and the White House were also both worried about being blamed by the other if efforts to save the refinery failed.
Meanwhile, the EPA was bending. To avoid public hearings and requirements of new source review, an existing plant making changes had to balance any emission increase with a decrease in another part of the plant. There is a narrow exception that allows an decrease at a plant to offset an increase at another, but these are designed for adjacent facilities that can’t operate without each other.
In the end, the EPA said it would allow the Philadelphia refinery to offset anticipated emission increases at that plant — related to Carlyle’s plans to add facilities — with reductions resulting from the closure of Sunoco’s Marcus Hook refinery.
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political pressure from WH got EPA to back off enforcing their own rules in Philly orit would have shut down too as the cost of compliance made it uneconomical to operate. oh yeah, unions cut their costs their too. Can't wait for EPA to try and bust somebody else now as this should set a precedent...
bottom line, EPA rulemaking and enforcement under oblamer made cost of refining higher.
what do you expect to happen when you raise the cost to produce? where were those billions of required improvements going to come from? your pocket and mine is where. just another way of taxing carbon based energy. this is part of the process to raise carbon based energy prices to discourage the use of that form of energy. you know, the global warming thingy
then check out actual refinery capacity instead of just number of refineries. there is no shortage of refinery capacity but there is a shortage of cheap refinery capacity. oblamer's policies have driven up the cost to refine, even with the much lower cost of nat gas to use as fuel to power refineries, so the cost of gasoline and diesel is up
here is a charty thingy you might like for gasoline capacity
edit..apparently image will not post so here is the link. you will see that the US gasoline refinery capacity is near the all time high that was set in 2011
http://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/Lea...CDDG_NUS_5&f=A
here is the table for all distillates
http://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/pet_pnp_..._dcu_nus_a.htm
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