Why would any want to spend money to modify a refinery to use a more expensive oil? To raise prices in the US?
Where the refineries can be expanded economically, to use more oil, locally produced, to make more fuels to sell, that makes sense. But it also means more net export of refined products of the surplus.
Shipping costs are obviously lower than refinery improvements or the industry would be fighting the tough battle of getting refineries in shape or built to handle the product they produce here rather than taking the politically easier to purchase export route.
False premise. You also have to take into account we are already refining more than we use.
The horse is long gone from the barn and you're telling me how much better off I'll be if blacksmiths selling horse shoes have more access to free markets elsewhere.
Sorry, even if by some miracle the horse returns to the barn, the owner isn't allowed to decide for himself when to shoe the horse, which horse shoes to use, or even who uses and rides the horse. Free market arguments do not apply no matter how often avoiding the consequences accrued over fifty years of buying ways around the US market are dressed up in free market disguises.
Evading the US internal market issues that restrain trade here doesn't have a market driven outcome for the internal US market one way or another. There's no way to assure anyone in the US that fuel prices will be lower just because oil producers and refiners participating in an international "free market" allows oil companies to lower their costs and makes good sense according to known free market theory.
You're the one hanging onto a false premise, the premise that anything to do with "Free Trade" or "free market" arguments apply for consumers and citizens within the US just because they help those who can afford to avoid dealing with the market restraints within the US and not be restrained by the same realities those who cannot buy their way around the internal system are.
You're making an, "all things being equal, in theory" argument, over and over, when all things are not equal. Avoid the messy details of the reality we all live in and all sorts of things can be championed as good for US citizens and the nation as a whole. Hey, with any luck at all the same thugs putting the coal industry out of business will be able to shut down the petroleum industry as well in a decade and since we're not going to deal with reality, won't that be nice !!! A blissful all natural world !!!
Unfortunately, we little folks can't avoid the reality that there's no free market here so how a free market benefits oil producers is in no way something that has a high probability of passing through to the US market. It does, though, make it easier for oil producers to lower their costs and increase their profits with no pressure on them to pass those lower costs through to the US market that artificially constrains consumption, dictates what products are made available to the consumer, and mandates the replacement of oil products with more expensive alternatives, and on, and on, . . .
But, making it good for the oil producers is a "free market" issue, not an argument against letting corporations continue to avoid the consequences of their own political actions over the past fifty years? Please, what benefits oil producers benefits oil producers, period. Whether they hire one more American citizen or pass one cent of savings through to the consumer is more dependent on the phase of the moon than on "free market" forces.
When there's free trade and free markets within the US, then talk to me about how in theory access to free markets on an international level benefits US citizens, US security, and US sovereignty.