[legion]

With retail gasoline prices as high as they have been the last few years, refiners want desperately to increase capacity. And they have, as Sammy points out. They have used every trick in the book to increase efficiency and throughput. These are still subject to impact studies and regulatory approval, and they are done without too much difficulty.

But we have reached the point where they have gotten as much as possible out of existing refineries with every known trick. Refineries that have the real estate have even built new cracking units.

But we still need more, and our refining capacity is concentrated in just a few large refineries. If a bad storm hits the area of a refinery or a fire happens, it will take out much more capacity than in years past when there were more, smaller refineries.

The NIMBY and GreanPeace element has figured out how to use our courts to short-circuit the free market system. So on the one hand we have high demand, and on the other we have static supply. Price goes up.