[thackney]

the ones that upgraded have record maintenance periods which offsets much increased capacity periods.

You claiming that downtime has increased that negates the increaded capacity? That seems hard to substantiate given that the actual production through the US refineries has grown over the last decade. Granted, it has not grown enough, but it has grown.

[tobyhill]

The cost isn't justified if compared to the amount of growth. Cost has increased over 120% in less than 5 years but the consumption worldwide is slightly over 20% in 5 years. Now since Oil Giants have been nominated as the corporate citizens of the year, how can any company make record profits if they don't have the product to sell? Now just for making a remark about REAL capacity, when a company declares shut down for maintenance it does not count for or against capacity in their weekly inventory report so a company can legally make a claim that they are running 96% capacity with 4% in shut down but in reality they are truly running at 92%. Straight from the top analyst mouth at the EIA.