How much is your local "Trump at the Pump Tax?"

The U.S. hasn't built any major refineries since 1977.

 

Chicken Little, every day....................

 

Yep there is no limit to what we can’t do.

m.youtube.com/watch?v=-CHIR1J8Zq8&ra=m

1977 conveniently aligns very closely to when our .gov tried to bail out a foreign oil company BP from having to pay taxes to Iran. We did this by creating a series of events that removed the liberal western leaning Iranian government. (Berne and company have a video on the topic)

1977 also conveniently aligns to when we we’re going to start having basic emissions on refineries. Certain foreign owned oil companies decided it was cheaper to reduce repairs and maintenance exchanging safety for more fires and spills which conveniently raise the cost of oil, obviously if they can’t do maintenance they can’t build new either, they will tell you new refineries aren’t financially feasible but they do occasionally increase efficiency and output from the ever shrinking number of refineries we do have.

Our refineries that work with domestic crude just fine have been shuttered over the decades, we had one in Wisconsin that was setup for domestic. Lots of the old experimental refineries that made all manner of non-gasoline products for industry from any form of crude have also been shuttered even though it causes supply chain issues for chemists, medical and other specialty consumers.

nothing like the race to the bottom that happens when you protect an industry.


Worth noting, because we don’t follow FIFO, 2/3’s of the remaining strategic reserve is said to be unusable tar and sludge, stuff that should have been first to remove for the road projects

 

Isn't this a common anti-Semitic trope and dog-whistle?

= = = = = =
Rothschild | #TranslateHate | AJC

"Rothschild
person \ rōt SHild \

: a wealthy Jewish family whose banking business dates back to the 18th century Holy Roman Empire

WHEN IT’S ANTISEMITIC:
The Rothschilds are a Jewish banking family who have been accused of secretly controlling the economy, manipulating the weather, and profiting from wars. “Rothschild” has become a generic term for greedy and manipulative Jewish billionaires (see Jewish figures, greed)."

= = = = = =
Perma | Rothschilds | Center on Extremism

ADL Glossary of Extremism and Hate Home

Rothschilds
The Rothschild banking family has been at the center of a longstanding antisemitic conspiracy theory that plays on stereotypes of Jewish power and connection to money. The theory posits that a cabal of Jews led by the Rothschilds has been manipulating currency and exerting influence on regional and national events since the early 19th century for the purposes of personal enrichment and world domination. Antisemitic conspiracy theorists blame "The Rothschilds" for numerous historical events, including interference with the American Revolution, financing Nazism and the Bolshevik Revolution and perpetrating the 9/11 attacks. Sometimes "Rothschild" is simply used as an antisemitic dog whistle for "Jew" or "Jewish."

= = = = = = =
https://factcheck.afp.com/doc.afp.com.36RR8D7 (Agence France-Presse)

False claims the Rothschild family owns central banks resurface online

The Rothschild banking family is frequently the target of conspiracy theories, often fueled by anti-Semitism. ...

 

The US and UK supported a coup that overthrew an elected Iranian democracy in 1953, restoring an authoritarian monarchy, a royal dictatorship that was friendly to Western Big Oil, at the expense of most Iranian citizens. A brutal secret police force, SAVAK, routinely monitored, imprisoned, and tortured political dissidents.

I.e. we broke it long before 1977.

 

NYMEX commodity prices today, May 18:

Brent, $112.12/bbl
WTI, $108.75/bbl

What will TACO Tuesday bring?

 

So I asked Google:

The United States exported nearly 4 billion barrels of petroleum and crude oil to 146 countries. The top five destinations for U.S. oil exports are: [1]

• The Netherlands: 419 million barrels (approx. 11% of exports)
• Mexico: 398 million barrels (approx. 10% of exports)
• Canada: 324 million barrels (approx. 8% of exports)
• South Korea: 257 million barrels (approx. 7% of exports)
• Japan: approx. 6% of exports [1, 2]

Note: The Netherlands acts as a major European transshipment hub, importing U.S. oil to feed local refineries and distribute to surrounding countries like Germany and Belgium. [1]​

I appreciate the irony that "drill baby drill" crowd can reverse vehicle emissions but haven't figured out how to get a domestic oil refinery licensed and working that uses our own feedstock.

Bob Wilson

​

 

Easy... because the input and the output can both be traded internationally.

If the output of your refinery can be sold on the open market just like the output of mine, we are competitors.

But if your friendly neighborhood national government forces you to follow a whole bunch of environmental and worker safety laws while mine doesn't, then my output will always be more profitable than yours. No banks will finance your refinery construction. You'd have to use your own money to build it and settle for lower net profits the whole time it ran afterwards.

We absolutely could do more of our own refining, but all of the reasons for doing so are ones that don't matter to the bankers.

That's all there is to understand.

 

Is it?
NIMBY doesn't have anything to do with it?
Huge environmental / regulatory issues have nothing to do with it?
.

 

You turned Leadfoot's "But if your friendly neighborhood national government forces you to follow a whole bunch of environmental and worker safety laws while mine doesn't, then my output will always be more profitable than yours" into "........." when you quoted him, so you could pretend he didn't mention "environmental / regulatory issues"?

 

Among the other reasons given already, is the fact that Congress got rid of the crude oil export ban from the 1970s in 2015. Then before that, fracked and shale oil may have been redefined as petroleum products to get around the crude oil export ban.
U.S. Repeals Longstanding Ban on Export of Crude Oil

There is no reason for domestic owned oil companies to not do the same.

There is also a price gap between oil futures and what refineries are paying for physical crude. A month ago, Brent's future price was at $97 while refineries were paying $133.
Oil Price Today: Brent (BZ=F) at $97 While Refineries Pay $133 — The $38 Gap That's Never Been This Wide

 

This, and:

"NIMBY" is another way of saying the devolopers and their bankers don't want the expense of buying out everyone in the neighborhood of the hypothetical proposed refinery.

It wasn't so long ago you could just bribe a government official to deed over some swath of land for a project. If anyone still thinks a land acquisition could possibly be that cheap, nobody will face the realities of buying out the old neighborhood to create space.

 

Is that to suggest they'd just wait for a moment when openly, gleefully bribe-able government officials are ascendant, and make their moves then?

 

the point was Iran would not need to be “enemy of the world “ if BP would have just paid its taxes and our decades of unnecessary buildup.

So Nah, we really tried to fail on that one, when things got really bad during their revolution was 79, that only happened after decades of repeated bad decisions, including strongmen and continuing interference and military buildup. We could have literally stopped any time and things would have been less bad.

Iranians have good reason to be eternally po’d with us.

 

So the Trump administration are actually greenies and worker’s protectionist?

Bob Wilson

 

I'm sure they would ease any blockage to building a refinery. They would have done so last time they were in charge for one to help now though.

 

Some of this returns to the US, California in particular, in the form of gasoline. in 2025 it was 10 million barrels (?, units are not specified. Some of it is from Russian oil through a loophole which really should not exist but is why the article below was written. It has an illustration of the sources of California gasoline - regardless of the source of the oil that it was made from.)

As prices climb, California imports more gasoline made from Russian oil