"..again and again we have been told by industry executives that North America can be energy independent if only regulations and environmentalists would get out of the way, and they know full well it’s not true.
The biggest lie of all is the one that says that drilling every possible place in the US and importing the maximum amount of dirty tar sands oil will lower gas prices....
Over 40% of America’s refining capacity and over 20% of US oil
production is on the hurricane prone Gulf Coast. So the price of gas at
the pump will always be vulnerable to the vagaries of the Atlantic
hurricane season.
Something that climate change is clearly exacerbating.
As Isaac hones in on Louisiana, over 1 million b/d of oil production
has been shut down along with six refineries, sending the price of
gasoline up around the country. In Chicago, gasoline jumped over 30
cents a gallon on the wholesale market.
So sending more oil to the Gulf
Coast, as Keystone XL proposes to do, is hardly a strategy for lowering
gas prices.
But there is another reason why the Gulf Coast refining center, and the industry it serves, does not constitute a viable strategy for ensuring affordable energy for America.
But there is another reason why the Gulf Coast refining center, and the industry it serves, does not constitute a viable strategy for ensuring affordable energy for America.
Exports. As
we have previously documented, the Gulf Coast is at the center of an
unprecedented boom in gasoline and diesel exports.
Tepid US demand,
burgeoning Latin American demand for diesel and deep water harbor access
has reoriented these refineries toward reliance on export markets, and
that means that gasoline consumers in America now compete with the
global market for supplies from the country’s biggest refining center."
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