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Absolutely. They ARE in it for the money. If you have a system that makes money for you and is dependent on output, the more output, the more money you make, then there are a couple of things that are almost certainly going to happen:

First, you are going to use your capacity to the fullest. No matter what. I don’t work in the industry, but I am willing to bet the people who work there are under pressure to squeeze every last drop of refined product out. More refined product=More money.

Second, If someone goes to management and says “We have a problem. If we don’t shut this line down and fix (insert problem here) we are going to have an unscheduled interruption due to an equipment failure...” you can be sure he is going to be viewed with a very hairy eyeball. I can just hear the response now: “How much longer can we go with it?” and they are going to probably take it as close to failure as they can go.

Secondly, from what I understand, there is a constant flux in the type of refining that is done, depending on the needs of the market. The refineries have to retool depending on the needs of the market. Retooling involves a decrease in production. The market drives it. When politicians start getting involved in mandating how much diesel fuel versus how much gasoline, kerosene or naval distillate is produced, you can bet that there is going to be a glut of diesel fuel somewhere, and a shortage of kerosene somewhere else. The market is the best way to control those things. Money talks. In this case, the government getting involved in pushing ethanol on the refineries AND us has to have an effect beyond the cost of beef going up because it costs more to feed the cattle because corn is being sold to make fuel.

But why would a company want to build and not operate spare capacity?

Because it costs $Billions and many years to build a refinery and even though the price of gasoline may be high, the margins per gallon are not.

You have to be certain to be able to refine a helluva lot of gallons for a helluva lot of years or that multi-billion dollar investment sits idle and you lose $millions.

Although complex, there's really no magic in building a refinery. Any huge corporation or investment firm that could ammass the huge capital expense could initiate one - doesn't have to be an evil, selfish oil company. That this isn't happening is a pretty good indication that no one believes building a refinery is going to be profitable, within the oil industry or outside it.

Of course they’re in it for the money. You say that like it’s a bad thing. If there weren’t a profit to be made, the byproduct of kerosene production that no one wanted and that was a hazard to dispose of (gasoline) would never have been marketed as a fuel.

Why have unused capacity? Simple. Backup. Why do IT departments have only partially used and unused servers in their data centers? Backup. To share load. To switch to in an emergency.

Wanna do some research? Check into whether the Feds require each plant to have unused capacity to be used during emergencies. I’d be surprised if it didn’t exist.