Beam me to Planet Gore !
Posted on 06/13/2008 6:58:46 AM PDT by K-oneTexas
Greens Thwart Gasoline Production By Steven Milloy
Four-plus-dollar gasoline is forcing Americans to realize that we need increased domestic oil production to meet our ever-growing demand for affordable fuel. But even if the greens lose the political battle over drilling offshore and in places like the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, they nevertheless are way ahead of the game as they implement a back-up plan to make sure that not a drop of that oil ever eases our gasoline crunch.
The Sierra Club and the Natural Resources Defense Council, or NRDC, successfully pressured the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to block ConocoPhillips’ expansion of its Roxana, Ill., gasoline refinery, which processes heavy crude oil from Canada, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday.
The project would have expanded the volume of Canadian crude processed from 60,000 barrels per day to more than 500,000 barrels a day by 2015. After the Illinois EPA had approved the expansion, the green groups petitioned the federal EPA to block it, alleging ConocoPhillips wasn’t using the best available technology for reducing emissions of sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides.
Apparently, the plant’s planned 95 percent reduction in sulfur dioxide emissions and 25 percent reduction in nitrogen oxides wasn’t green enough. NRDC’s opposition is quite ironic since ConocoPhillips and the activist group actually are teammates in the global warming game. Both belong to the U.S. Climate Action Partnership, a coalition of eco-activist groups and large companies that is lobbying for global warming regulation.
So even though ConocoPhillips is aiding and abetting the NRDC to achieve the green dream of absolute government control over the U.S. energy supply, the enviros still are in take-no-prisoners mode, refusing to allow the expansion of a single refinery.
Imagine what the rest of us can expect from the greens.
Meanwhile, in California, green groups are working through the state attorney general’s office to block the upgrade of the Chevron refinery in the city of Richmond. The $800 million upgrade essentially would expand the useable oil supply by permitting the refinery to process lower-quality, less-expensive crude oil.
California Attorney General, ex-Gov. and climate crusader Jerry Brown claims the upgrade will produce an additional 900,000 tons of greenhouse gas emissions per year. But Chevron says the upgrade actually will reduce the emissions by 220,000 tons.
Whose figure is closer to the truth?
It’s hard to know for sure at this point, but it’s worth noting that material false statements made by Chevron are prosecutable under the federal securities laws and California state law, while Brown and the activists pretty much can say whatever they want without legal accountability.
Whatever the facts are, Brown and the city of Richmond insist that Chevron eliminate 900,000 tons of greenhouse gas emissions so that the upgrade will be "carbon neutral." While the greens remain vehemently opposed to the project, it seems their plans for blocking the refinery might go awry as Brown and the local government eventually may side with Chevron rather than the greens, but only because the company has deep pockets and is open to being shaken down.
Brown and the city have proposed that Chevron ensure that half the total emissions-reduction projects be undertaken on-site at the refinery and the other half be done either in the city of Richmond itself or elsewhere in California.
Translating the latter part of this "offer that can’t be refused:" Chevron essentially must purchase 450,000 tons of "carbon credits" annually from the city of Richmond or the state. As the street value of carbon credits is about $10 per ton, Chevron is being "green-mailed" to the tune of perhaps $4.5 million per year to upgrade its refinery — amounting to perhaps a 1 percent annual "tax" on the gains in gross revenue produced by the upgrade. And the local government officials are not the least embarrassed about this extortion.
"When you’re dealing with a refinery where the project will cost close to a billion dollars and someone like Chevron with tremendous resources, that’s not a constraint, so they should do everything possible," an unidentified state official told Carbon Control News in a June 9 article.
The farcical nature of the entire transaction is underscored by that state official’s apparent lack of understanding about how greenhouse gas-induced global warming is supposed to work.
The official told Carbon Control News that the greenhouse gas emission reductions "are vital to protect low-income minority communities in the Richmond area, which already suffer disproportionate pollution impacts."
Climate alarmism, of course, is based on the notion of global emissions causing global warming, not local emissions causing local warming; moreover, the allegation that low-income minority populations are disproportionately harmed by industrial emissions — the basis of the so-called "environmental justice" concept of the 1990s — hasn’t stuck since no scientific evidence supports it.
Though green and local government shenanigans can be a source of endless amusement, let’s get back to the main point. As the 2005 hurricane season dramatized, oil production, itself, is only one factor in determining gasoline supply and prices.
Damage to Gulf Coast refineries by hurricanes Katrina and Rita reduced gasoline supplies and increased prices worldwide — a real problem given that U.S. refineries operate at or near capacity thanks to other green constraints.
We may produce all the oil we need, but if we can’t refine it, then it won’t do much for reducing gasoline supply problems. So while working to expand domestic drilling, we’ll simultaneously need to expand domestic refining capacity.
It will be quite the Pyrrhic victory to finally produce oil from ANWR and then not be able to do anything with it.
Steven Milloy publishes JunkScience.com and DemandDebate.com. He is a junk science expert, advocate of free enterprise and an adjunct scholar at the Competitive Enterprise Institute.
Quoting later, thanks.
That's *if* you return. If the cold and snow doesn't get you, the polar bears will, and I assure you, the bears are not as helpless as the greens' PR machine makes them out to be.
Can I neuter them with my .45 ?
My advice to ConocoPhillips in IL and Chevron in CA - close down your facilities, and explain why you’re doing so.
BTTT
Do you really believe that if more drilling were authorized, refinery capacity would remain the same?
No, but it wouldn't expand any faster either.
Existing refineries are already expanding as rapidly as the greens will permit. New refineries are being attempted and thwarted.
Please explain how US refining capacity would increase any faster with more crude on the market? Should we assume it would happen by magic?
I'm all for more domestic crude production, don't get me wrong. But it wouldn't do much to the consumer price of fuel when all our refineries are running at 95-100% of capacity.
Other countries are expanding their refining capacity where we cannot, so the US market will be importing not only foreign oil, but more and more foreign gasoline and Diesel fuel in the coming years.
The envirowackos will ensure that the USA remains dependent on imported energy, one way or another.
http://www.siouxcityjournal.com/articles/2008/06/04/news/top/4e608d46402d5adb8625745e00110beb.txt
ELK POINT, S.D. -- Flashing a smile, Joyce Bortscheller briefly hugged Hyperion Energy Center executive Preston Phillips as she greeted him in the backyard of her home here.
Bortscheller, president of the Elk Point City Council, had invited about 250 supporters to an outdoor barbecue Tuesday to await the returns for arguably the most important election in Union County's history. The big crowd didn't leave disappointed.
As midnight approached, they popped the champagne corks, celebrating a hard-fought victory that keeps alive the county's chances of landing the nation's first all-new oil refinery in 32 years.
By a solid 58 percent to 42 percent margin, county voters approved Hyperion's request to rezone 3,292 acres of farm land for a new classification, Energy Center Planned Development.
"What happened tonight, we were not supposed to be able to do," Phillips told a cheering audience. "Development projects like this are supposed to be outright rejected by residents and neighbors. But this project is a testament to our balancing the needs for growth and for protecting the environment."
At stake was billions of dollars in capital investment and thousands of high-paying jobs. From the beginning, Hyperion executives said they would abandon its Union County site, just north of Elk Point, if a majority of voters failed to give their blessing to the rezoning.
While conceding defeat, opponents vowed to keep fighting the controversial project on every imaginable front, pressing on with a lawsuit it filed against the county over the zoning procedures and opposing Hyperion as it applies for a bevy of state and federal permits.
"We have strategies in place to slow or delay all the permit processes," Ed Cable, chairman of the anti-Hyperion group Save Union County, said after the vote.
1976.
Kudos to Ed Cable, a great Union County patriot.
/sarc
Very well said!!! Bravo!!! Encore!!!
Ed Cable may want to be careful—he may end up at the end of a rope tied to a high branch in a tall pine tree!
Don’t be silly. If there’s going to be new drilling, there will be subsequent new refineries built as well.
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