And your point is.....? My guess is that it's still cheaper to lightly refine better, low sulfur oil than to heavily refine a bunch of crap.
That's why ANWAR doesn't make much sense to me -- we should tap it as an emergency reserve, but it ain't worth much more than that..
You get a better cut of gasoline from light crude. Heavy crude sells at a discount which more than makes up for it. The author totally overlooks the value of coker gasoil coming off the coker, plus the value of the delayed pet coke, which is selling nicely these days, plus ignores the "bottomless" crudes generated in Alberta from tar sands. US and Canadian refineries running this syncrude are presented with a new, unique problem; how to keep their cokers charged when the crude has no asphaltines.