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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: LindyBill who wrote (120796)	6/19/2005 4:55:42 PM
From: Snowshoe	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 793838

>>monopolistic gasoline refineries You don't want to try to get more refineries, and you don't like the above. I give up.<< I should have said oligopolistic rather than monopolistic. An oligopoly is the condition where a handful of companies control the market. Consolidation is the dominant trend in the oil industry for a variety of compelling reasons, only one of which is environmental costs. I think it's simplistic to expect you can reverse this trend by dealing with only one of the causes. Many experts say we are close to peak global oil production, and that annual global oil production will soon being declining. If true, then the proper market response is to produce oil substitutes (and increase fuel efficiency) rather than building new refineries for nonexistent oil. In addition to the substitutes I mentioned earlier, another would be LNG (Liquified Natural Gas). It's pretty simple to convert existing vehicles to run on natural gas, and (unlike crude oil) there's a very large supply of new global LNG production capacity coming on line. The big problem is getting past the local objections to LNG terminals in coastal waters, especially in California. If this problem can be overcome, I think it makes more sense to build costly new infrastructure for cheap LNG rather than expensive crude oil.