When was the last time a refinery was built in this country?
"Why does that point matter?"
It has been over 25 years since a new major refinery was built in the united states.. It is important as you may remember when South America last year went on major strike , I think it Vz. and the oil industry was shut down.
This caused major supply problems for U.S. guess why... refineries here depend on that crude since we cannot drill off shore for crude and since we cannot build refineries here,we went and built several ,,,, in South America...
All the more reason to start a conservation program now before its too late. Europe raised the price of gas long ago. Its time we were as farsighted.
Now as to the high prices of natural gas U.S. citizens are paying.. The government has increasingly blocked access to new sources of supply. A moratoria that closed areas off the East and West Coasts and in the Eastern Gulf of Mexico were renewed to 2012, which futher limit access to an estimated 70 trillion cubic feet (tcf) of natural gas resources... While we have domestic resources which are plentiful they are challenging to develop.
That's right.......CA and the east Gulf were tired of the spills and the mess they create. Remember the Valdez.......the bay that was hit the worst still has not come back back ecologically or economically, and that was ten years ago.
Currently there is a back log of 2800 applications to drill and litigation is frequently pursued by environmental groups to block development.
So we in our homes are paying through the nose for higher prices as a result of litigation by environmentalists.
There is a backlog of drilling applications now because a shortage of nat. gas developed last winter and prices were jacked up. The reason the shortage and higher prices developed was because not enough nat. gas was put into storage last summer. And the reason not enough nat. gas was put into storage was because wells were petering out and the price of nat. gas was too low to make new drilling economically feasible. Maybe some new drilling has been held up for environmental reasons but this is still a very capitalistic nation! Go to the Baker Hughes web site and you will find the lastest statistics for the nat. gas and oil rig count. The last time I looked both were up dramatically from last summer.
However, all the new rigs may not mean we will be awash in nat. gas. Many of the new wells are being drilled in old fields where a lot of the nat. gas has been pumped out. Therefore, these new wells do not produce the quantity that the old wells did. Plus, most of the easily claimed nat. gas has been taken; the harder to reach nat. gas is pretty much all that is left.
In any case, stop blaming the environmentalists for our energy problems. The ultimate blame is our unbridled capitalism and the gluttony that ensues. As for the environmentalists, they are doing God's work for the most part, and should be commended and not criticized. |
