Can some answer tv reporter comment yesterday that USA has limited heavy crude oil refinery capability

Question

If this is the case, then won't most oil drilled for in USA go to other countries?

Answer 1

yes I think we have 5 or 7... not sure one of those though. GW has been trying to give some of the military bases that clinton closed to the oil industry free of charge so that they can build more refineries on them.

Unfortunately, the dem congress won't let that fly... they dont want bush to have been able to do something to help our economy.... at our expense. sad isn't it....

to answer your question... I think most would go to our reserves... not export

Answer 2

I think that you have just seen something that all the gullible people haven't noticed yet- All the oil in the world wont make any difference if we do not have the capacity to refine it- that is how the oil companies control the supply of the oil in the US market- They say it is just too expensive to build a new refinery. This comes from an industry that had a combined profit of $40 billion dollars this last quarter. That is also the reason that the Alaskan pipeline oil is exported.

Answer 3

This is true. It's a fallacy that domestic oil would be available for domestic consumption. Like you point out, we simply don't have the refining capacity available to process oil. Domestically drilled oil get sent overseas into the world market to be refined. It is then sold on the world market. Which means that US supplies are used to satisfy world demand, and not to lower prices for US consumers.

What we do know is that the United States has approximately 3 percent of the world oil supply available for drilling domestically. We also know that the US currently consumes approximately 20 percent of the total world supply of oil. So on a raw economic level, the amount of oil that we are be able to produce through drilling would simply would have almost no real effect on economic pressures that are currently causing gas prices to increase to the point that they have.

But when money and politics mix, we're sure to hear about it over and over, as we are right now