You Can Produce All The Oil You Want, But Unless You Can Refine It.....

.....It won't make a bit of difference in lowering gas prices. The Chicago Sun Times had a very interesting editorial today on one of the major causes of rising gas prices here in America (though gas prices have fallen for the third straight week). The problem isn't so much that we are not importing or producing enough oil here at home, for crude oil imports hit 10.86 million barrels a day last week, the third highest average in history, but rather America's incapacity to refine that crude oil into gasoline. America's ability to refine crude has become so porous in fact, that we had to import over a million barrels of gasoline for the third straight week last week.

This isn't a problem that has just popped up on us either, for as the article points out there hasn't been an oil refinery facility built in America since the 70's. So what has been happening over the past thirty years is we have allowed our energy infrastructure to slowly decay while the demand for energy has steadily risen, by a third since 1976, leading to the shortage of energy right now and the high gas prices.

Though improving our refining capacity won't solve all the energy problems this nation faces, it will address many aspects of this problem. In his energy plan the president proposed building more refinery facilities on closed military bases, about a hundred of which are scattered throughout the nation. Doing this will go a long ways in insuring that more gasoline at a cheaper price is available at the pumps.

However this will only be a short term fix, for we need to create other forms of energy outside of fossil fuel that can meet our energy demands in the future. Fossil Fuels won't be available forever, so we must make sure we are prepared for that day whenever it may come. Some signs do exist that the transition from fossil fuels to other forms of energy has already begun, for sales of hybrid vehicles were up 80% last year.

By increasing oil production here at home, our capacity to refine that oil into gasoline, and developing more energy efficient technology, we as a nation are making sound energy choices that will alleviate the burden on this economy that high energy prices have become and the influence oil has on our foreign policy at the height of the War on Terror.