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Originally Posted by host
Attention !!! The "free market" is not maximizing US petroleum output or refined products output.
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I see you put "free market" in quotes. We know the oil and energy market is not a free market. The world's oil production is mostly controlled by national governments and is heavily regulated.
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It is so glaring a problem, in addition to the documentation I have already posted, that crude oil rich North Dakota is mulling over building a state owned oil refinery to relieve yearly diesel fuel shortages...they cannot persuade private enterprise to build a second refinery in their state, and NATIONALLY...BP-Amoco's screw ups, neglect, deception, and criminality these past few years are shocking....they result in a loss of at least 5 percent of total domestic petroleum output, higher prices in the US, and a US trade deficit $1 billion higher per month than it had to be.
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I know the initial response will be to attack the messenger, but I present it anyway. Peter Robinson is the vice chairman of Chevron.
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Robertson said there would be plenty of oil available to the United States if the oil companies were allowed to get it: “Eighty-five percent of offshore oil is off-limits.” Responding to objections to offshore drilling by environmentalists and their allies in Congress, Robertson noted that some of the strongest pro-environment nations in Europe — he mentions Denmark, Norway, the United Kingdom — lease offshore locations for oil exploration. The technology has become so good, he said, that during Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, “one thousand offshore wells were destroyed (in the Gulf of Mexico), but not one leaked.” Australia, he said, has allowed offshore drilling for 40 years without any environmental damage.
In addition to the sinking value of the dollar, here is the main problem: According to the Department of Energy, U.S. oil production has fallen approximately 40 percent since 1985, while the consumption of oil has grown by more than 30 percent.
According to government estimates, there is enough oil in areas accessible to America — 112 billion barrels — to power more than 60 million cars for 60 years. The Outer Continental Shelf alone contains an estimated 86 billion barrels of oil and 420 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. Had President Clinton not vetoed exploration in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) in 1995, when oil was $19 a barrel, America would currently be receiving more than 1 million barrels a day domestically, all of it taken by better technology than existed more than 30 years ago. That was when the Alaskan pipeline was built despite protests from environmentalists who claimed it would destroy the caribou. It didn’t, but the environmentalists are back with the same discredited arguments. Because most of the oil remains “off-limits,” we are becoming more dependent on foreign oil.
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http://www.calthomas.com/index.php?news=2266
We can take on the issue of oil refinery capacity next, but first lets resolve the supply question at least agree that oil companies do not control the supply of oil, the market is not free, and that the US government could allow significantly more domestic production.