[thackney]

The issue here would seem to be lack of U.S. refinery capacity.

I do not think so. The US already refines more product that we use ourselves. We have surplus capacity.

We import more oil than we need for domestic demand, refine it and export the surplus products. Some of that is refinery "leftovers", the bottom of the barrel after higher quality fuels like gasoline and diesel have been separated out. Petroleum Coke and Residual Oil are examples of those.

[Eric Pode of Croydon]

The US already refines more product that we use ourselves. We have surplus capacity.

Oddly enough, though, there always seems to be "refinery maintenance" initiated at precisely the right time to keep any drop in crude prices from showing up at the gas pump.

[thejokker]

The issue here would seem to be lack of U.S. refinery capacity.

I do not think so. The US already refines more product that we use ourselves. We have surplus capacity.

We import more oil than we need for domestic demand, refine it and export the surplus products. Some of that is refinery "leftovers", the bottom of the barrel after higher quality fuels like gasoline and diesel have been separated out. Petroleum Coke and Residual Oil are examples of those.

Actually I think you will find that global refinery production is up and there is a global surplus of gasoline. We actually import gasoline as a result. Adding refineries in the U.S. would increase the availability of Domestic gasoline lowering the price.