[CertainInalienableRights]

one makes no sense; there is nothing stopping any American with sufficient capital from building refineries right now... except lack of profitability and common sense

Although you're right that return on investment is a critical part of the decision-making process, I don't believe the issue is the price of oil.

Older refineries are already profitable - there's no reason to believe a new, presumably more efficient, refinery would be profitable.

The key, though, is that to return the investment, the refinery has to actually operate.

When there's the very real possibility that some wacko environmental group will find a friendly judge to shut down the refinery (for whatever reason) as soon as its completed, no one's going to go ahead and make that multi-year, multi-$Billion investment. The risk of not being able to make it back is too great.

[P-40]

Older refineries are already profitable

Expanding an existing refinery is often more profitable than building a new one too.

[rlmorel]

The problem is, that the refineries we do have are operating with nearly no allowance for downtime.

When critial maintenance needs to be done, or there is an equipment failure, we immediately edge even closer to the zone where we cannot supply enough refined products for our needs.

This writer also said:"...there is nothing stopping any American with sufficient capital from building refineries right now..."

What a steaming pantload that is, because the envirowhackos have made it impossible to build. And they regard it as a victory...while they drive their hybrids and their giant SUV's.