Rita: here we go again.... 2660

First, the production will go up when the Senate-House also authorizes more drilling offshore-in Anwar, etc and second, the production of heavy crude will increase as the (cheaper) "light sweet" crude dwindles. We need to build some more refineries to handle that.

Oh, yes it is. Its obvious even to the blind - refineries go off-line, and the price of gas goes up. If there were 50 more refineries in other parts of the country (and we weren't so pin-headed as to have our only distrubition points in essentially the same place that can get hit with the same disaster, or the same types of disaster) these other refineries would just up their production from 60% capacity to 70%, and the problem would be solved. Gas prices would not go up more than a few pennies.

Yeah, ALSO because of the envirowackos-NIMBYS that won't let this country drill where the oil is. Offshore. Alaska. Etc.

Sooner, unless we sweep the anti-production environmental NIMBY contingent into a corner somewhere.

By giving the country some reserve refining capacity so when something happens to a locality that has a lot of refineries, there will be other localities that can take up the slack (and keep the price down.)

Oil exploration has gone thru the roof as of late, as people are trying to find new oil fields (and will probably succeed) because of the elevated price of oil. That isn't likely to change, but we can keep it from going up a lot further if we can refine what is discovered.

It will help a lot.

We don't need 'em in a few years. We need 'em now.

Well, Richard Branson of Virgin Atlantic Airlines seems to think its a really great idea, and he's fabulously wealthy from making good business decisions. I'll take my cue from his atbreastude rather than yours.

Dave Head