looking at refinery production it appears that we are importing crude and not able to refine it, which is partly false, most fuels are refined before importing as you find that a barrel of oil (which contains 42 gallons) will yield something like 19 or 20 gallons of gasoline, depending on the refinery. it is easier and cheaper to ship refined product.
Thus the Saudi's ability to moderate world production has been based on thier "excess refinery capabilities" and not thier ability to ship crude.
Our problem at home has been our inability to increase or even relocate refinery production and the concentration in the gulf of the bulk of the capacity....this refinery capacity is needed to service our domestic production and is slowly being reduced in comparison to real demand growth.
when the hurricanes hit the gulf region the price skyrocketed due to the shutting down of the refineries and the elimination of the product in the pipelines.
by relocating and increasing our refinery production of domestic oil production, the price would decrease, because we would be placeing more product on the market, lessening our demand for imported "refined product"...
Just as increasing the ethonal production would lessen our dependance on the importation of MTBE, and supplement our domestic oil production.
"( For every barrel of ethanol produced, 1.2 barrels of petroleum are displaced.)"
so to say our lack of refinery capacity has no impact on domestic prices is wrong and any one with any economics education would easily see the
DIRECT connection....as well as any one with a bit of common sense...
http://www.eia.doe.gov/neic/brochure/oil_gas/primer/primer.htm
In 2004, 81 ethanol plants in 20 states produced a record 3.41 billion gallons of ethanol—an increase of more than 109 percent from 2000.
http://www.ethanolfacts.com/production.html
lets see, if BUSH can be blamed for lack of interest in ethanol then how come ethonal production has increased 109% since 2000????? and to double in the near future??? just think if he paid any attention to it we would be swimming in the stuff....thus causeing a shortage of corn??? for which the liberals would then blame on the conservatives........
Congress passed the first major energy legislation in 13 years before leaving for its summer recess. Ethanol is a big winner in that bill. Many expect ethanol production to double, and new plants are being built all over the country.
http://news.minnesota.publicradio.org/features/2005/08/30_hetlandc_energyethanol/
