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Originally Posted by rj1
Your statement in a nutshell shows why this country is f***ed up: the right blames the left for everything wrong and the left blames the right for everything wrong. And neither accepts they ever did anything wrong themselves.
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You're right. That's why we make compromises and come up with solutions that satisfy no one.
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Originally Posted by rj1
As far as refineries, we do need to build more I agree. The enviros however are joined by the NIMBYs on this, and NIMBYs are right-leaning from my previous experience. (The one thing that has been helping the country in the near past is that the existing refineries continue to be made bigger.)
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The left is equaly NIMBY, just not in the way you typically think. They want to protect the environment by stopping all development. That's a form of NIMBY.
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Originally Posted by rj1
Your argument on a whole though is a bit miniscule. Let's say we have all the refineries we need and no environmental standards, in other words let's say we ran our country like China. How much cheaper would gasoline be? Gasoline is $3.70 now, would it be more than 5% of the cost, or 18.5 cents? I know we have Indian posters here and I imagine their environmental policy with 1 billion people is similar to China, how much is a liter of gasoline there in rupees (if it is not government-subsidized)? We can then do a conversion.
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You're right. Gas won't be too much cheaper because crude accounts for something like 65% of the cost of gasoline. Don't know about now. That figure was from a long, long time ago when the crude was $80 a barrel. However more refining capacity would minimize price spikes due to temperary supply disruptions, like Katrina knocking out refineries or a refinery malfunction (accidents) or even just taking them offline for routine maintenance.
We need to drill our own oil if we want to get that price down. More oil from continental US would discourage speculators from bidding up oil. What is the most stable region in the entire world? Right here. Our supply would be guaranteed, unlike the oil from unstable regions of the world.