There are constantly three to four ships waiting ($20,000 per day) to unload at the WA refinery.
The refineries are also bottleneck.
I agree.
All these silly, tacky "DRILL!!! DRILL!!! DRILL!!!" mantras indicate the mentality of the posters who seem to think that we just drive up to an oil well and pump 15 gallons of refined 94 octane into our cars.
Furthermore, they seem to think that oil is the only energy source used in this country.
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So far we don't burn coal in our cars. But thats a mistake. As you point out, we have plenty of coal, and coal-to-diesel is mature technology, which is to say its old technology.
There is no reason we shouldn't be building half dozen coal-to-diesel plants right now.
And the second way we can burn coal in our cars is to push electric cars, and to build up our electric grid to service them. Good electrics are still pretty high, but there are some good ones out there now and the prices should start coming down over the next few years.
We are the Saudi Arabia of coal and oil shale, and there is no reason we shouldn't be cutting the Saudis at least out of our picture. We get a million and a half bpd from Saudi, and it wouldn't be that hard to replace. We just have to want to do it, and then do it.