The Environmentalist War on the Price of Gasoline,

Could it be that the high price of gasoline is not the fault of the Middle East, but of the Environmentalists?

The lack of capacity in REFINING the oil to gasoline seems to be the problem. Since 1976, 29 years by my reckoning, we have not built a refinery in the United States. It is my guess that we are using more gasoline since 1976. Heck, we need the Iranians and the Saudis to point this out to us. And if a major refinery becomes a target of terrorism, we are going to see significantly higher prices at the pump. heck, just a normal fire effects the price of gasoline.

Then we have the wonderful practice, lobbied for by the Environmentalists, of having special blends of gasoline for different regions of the country. When the already stretched refineries have to make that many blends, and then pump them to different spots all around the country, we are not being very efficient with a scarce resource.

So, what can we do? Ask President Bush to address this issue immediately. I bet if we went to one standard blend on refined gasoline for the whole of the United States, we would increase efficiency exponentially. It would be a fix that would resonate with;

•  the refiners in lower costs,
•  the companies who operate the pipelines, they will not have to manage the flow of all the different blends
• the population who will see lower prices immediately at the pump

Then, we can properly address the refinery production issue at a solid baseline and determine how much capacity we need as a nation.

The Environmental Lobby has to be stopped on this issue. Gasoline is still cheaper than milk by the gallon. What concerns me is that we have such a discombobulated system that any hitch in the refining process can cause an impact on our economy. This needs to be corrected soon.