Until tractors run on ehtanol, until pesticides are made from ethanol, until fertilizers are made from ethanol, until the trucks that transport the corn & alcohol run on ethanol, ethanol is nothing more than corporate welfare for ADM. It is pure fabrication to have oil industry spokespersons (and I include the DoE in that group) cite ethanol as a reason for not increasing refining capacity.

Of course, that said, gas is too cheap. We aren’t going to deal with either global warming or peak oil with gas at $3.00/gal. It needs to go significantly higher, maybe $5.00/gal.

Of course, even then we won’t deal with the problems. We are so screwed.

Why build a new multi-billion dollar refinery when oil is likely to get extremely expensive to import, and existing refinery capacity will be more than adequate.

Existing refineries are stressed from lack of maintenance, and yet the word “sulphur” does not appear in any of these comments.

From a poster on LATOC:

Refineries use stainless steel pipes to resist the sulphur. In the old days, when Brent crude was $12/bbl, it was no problem. Now that we’ve only got the expensive high sulfur sour crude to work with, it makes for much more corrosive gases.

Here’s the tricky part. Stainless steel has a specific temp where it chemically changes from the corrosion resistant metal to one which corrodes like regular steel. When you weld it, you get the adjoining metal to that temp and when it cools again its been chemically changed (sensitized to corrosion) so all those welded pipes have to be checked and replaced periodically to keep leaks from happening. Due to the high demand on refineries these repairs aren’t happening so leaks happen, and since its flammable corrosive gases, they catch fire, explode, death and injury left and right. This will continue forever. Refinery welders make really good money welding those pipes with replacement parts for all the corrosion, but they have to work fast and it has to be done again and again. Downtime means money lost for the refinery, which is pulling in $100K/hour in profits. They can afford to pay for the best. However they can’t always afford the downtime.

. . I have to tell you, PW, I don’t read these articles the same way. . . . .

I had suspected fuckery then, and LATELY, I’ve been partial to Jason Leopold’s version of who is to blame for the CA Energy Crisis:

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/071907J.shtml

And that’s why the Energy Task Force Papers Congress asked for, are NOT forthcoming.

They in themselves, would DECIMATE Cheney.

I can appreciate the incompetencies you refer to, but, my money’s on Leopold’s analysis.

The answer, of course, even though it’s “unthinkable” is for the government to just build them itself and to have the army go into the ones currently in existence, make sure they’re properly maintained and run at capacity. Running undercapacity is almost certainly essentially a deliberate decision.

anybody else hear the like?

the refinery lack seems another scam to me.