Anti-fossil fuel regulations to fight “Global Warming” have left America dangerously short of refining capacity.
https://www.battleswarmblog.com/?p=51470
Excerpt:
.....It doesn’t matter how much we “drill, baby, drill,” unless we also have the ability to “refine, baby, refine,” — or we become dependent upon foreign refiners.
Back in 2020, U.S. oil-refinery capacity peaked at 19 million barrels per day, according to the EIA. But because of the pandemic, and the delayed decision to permanently shut down the Philadelphia Energy Solutions refinery after a major accident in 2019, U.S. refinery capacity declined significantly during that year. (PES was the largest oil refinery on the East Coast and refined 335,000 barrels per day.)
In addition to the PES refinery, five more shut down over the course of 2020: the Shell refinery in Convent, La., the Tesoro Marathon refinery in Martinez, Calif., the HollyFrontier refinery in Cheyenne, Wyo., the Western Refining refinery in Gallup, N.M., and the Dakota Prairie refinery in Dickinson, N.D. Those six collectively refined more than 1 million barrels of oil per day.
Thus, the U.S. started 2021 with its lowest annual refining capacity in six years, and that capacity did not expand significantly over the rest of the year. And as the pandemic’s effects on American life faded, month by month, demand for fuel increased — not just from drivers but from trucking and shipping companies, construction companies — remember, 98 percent of all energy use in the construction sector comes from diesel — and from airlines and other consumers of jet fuel.
.....Right now, someone is likely shouting, “Reopen those closed refineries, then!” But that’s not so easy.
The former PES refinery complex in Philadelphia is being demolished. The Shell refinery is slated to become an “alternative fuels complex,” and it’s a similar transition for the Tesoro refinery. The HollyFrontier refinery is already converted to processing biofuels, as is the Dakota Prairie refinery. (Certain environmentalists will denounce the greedy oil companies and praise the companies producing environmentally friendly biofuels, never stopping to check and realize that many of them are the same companies.)
Wait, I haven’t even gotten to the bad news: Chemical maker Lyondell Basell Industries announced in April that the company will permanently close its Houston crude-oil refinery by the end of 2023. That plant refines about 263,000 barrels of gasoline, diesel, and jet fuel per day.
We almost never build oil refineries in the U.S. anymore. According to the EIA, the newest refinery in the United States is the Targa Resources Corporation’s site in Channelview, Texas, which began operating in 2019 and processes 35,000 barrels per day. Before that, the newest refinery with significant downstream unit capacity was Marathon’s facility in Garyville, La. That facility came online in 1977.
Back during the late Bush and early Obama years, Hyperion Energy attempted to start a massive project in South Dakota, aiming to build what would have been the sixth-largest oil refinery in the nation. But the project grew mired in red tape and environmentalist opposition and eventually was canceled. We would have experienced widespread shortages of refined fuels many years ago if some companies had not completed large-scale expansions of existing refineries.
And so, President Biden’s fuming about oil companies not drilling and demanding they “use it or lose it” is something of a red herring; it would not do U.S. oil consumers a lot of good to dramatically expand the supply of crude oil if there isn’t enough refinery capacity to turn that oil into useful products. And right now, there are no major projects planned to build new oil refineries or expand capacity at the existing ones.
Gripped by their green delusions, Democrats have long pledged to make fossil fuel too expensive to use. What they didn’t tell you, however, is that the side effect would be to make it too expensive for truckers to actually transport your food to you.
Shortage of contrast dye for medical scans leads to rationing, delayed procedures
https://www.upi.com/Health_News/2022/05/19/contrast-dye-shortage/2011652976968/
Excerpt:
U.S. hospitals are running low on contrast dye injected into patients undergoing enhanced X-rays, CT scans and MRIs.
The fluid, which makes the routine but potentially life-saving scans readable, helps doctors identify clots in the heart and brain. The shortage is expected to last until at least June 30, the American Hospital Association (AHA) says.
It’s a result of COVID-19 pandemic-related factory closures in Shanghai, China, where most of the world’s supply is made, according to CBS News.
GE Healthcare is the main U.S. supplier of contrast fluid, called Omnipaque.
The AHA has asked the company for more information on the shortage, saying hospitals rely on a consistent supply to diagnose and treat a wide range of patients, including those with life-threatening conditions.
“It is too easy for us to take for granted the readily available supply of something that is so important to our patients and our radiologic practices until it’s gone,” Dr. Thomas Grist said in a news release from the Radiological Society of North America. He’s the author on a new report on the issue published online Thursday in Radiology.
“We need to commit to changing the supply chain so that a single event in a faraway country does not put us in this predicament again,” said Grist, who is chair of the department of radiology at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health in Madison. “We owe it to our patients who trust us with their lives and well-being every day of the year.”
The dye is being “aggressively” rationed at the University of Alabama at Birmingham Health System and some elective imaging procedures are being delayed.
“We need to make sure we have IV contrast available for the patients in critical need,” health system CEO Dr. Selwyn Vickers told CBS News.
The health system’s supply of dye will be reserved for “life-or-death matters,” he said.
The University of Kansas Health System’s use of the dye is being limited to critically ill patients, according to Dr. Phil Johnson, chief of radiology.
“We had to triage and limit the use of contrast dye to only critically ill patients that had to have contrast dye either to establish a diagnosis, or to guide a life-saving or a limb-sparing treatment,” he told CBS News.
The American Hospital Association has more about the shortage of contrast dye.
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Guess preventive procedures also take a backseat, i.e. scans to see if one has tumors that need to be biopsied.