Apparently some people in America aren't too concerned about paying more than $4.00 a gallon for gas.
CNS News reports that while BP wants to expand a refinery in Whiting, Indiana, the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) is fighting the expansion.
So what if the expansion increased gas and diesel production by 1.7 million gallons a day. So what if the expansion created 2,000 construction jobs and 80 permanent jobs.
Now, I've never driven through Whiting, Indiana, but I have driven through and stopped in Billings, Montana many times. Driving along I-90, refinery infrastructure is about all you see. I had family living not to far from there a few years ago, and the last I knew, people weren't dying in the streets and the vegetation looked pretty healthy. No apocalypse to be found.
The United States hasn't built a new refinery in over 30 years due to the massive regulatory and permit boondoggle. It is fantastically expensive and time consuming, thanks to bureaucracy and pandering to environmental extremists. Meanwhile, our refining capacity is pretty much maxed out. And a disaster (Katrina?) in the wrong place could seriously set us back.
Hyperion is looking to build a new refinery near Elk Point, South Dakota, but that effort has also been hindered by environmental extremists with connections to California environmental groups. For now, the citizens of that area aren't buying the extremism; last month voters gave the green light to necessary zoning changes with 58% approval.
The Elk Point project plans to employ about 4,500 workers to build the facility, permanently employ 1,800 people, and process 400,000 barrels of oil a day.
None of that matters to earth-worshippers. No energy supply will ever be clean enough to make them happy: they don't like coal, they don't like oil, they don't like nuclear, and they don't even like wind power (kills birds and makes the skyline icky).
As long as we pander and kowtow to environmental extremists, keep your wallet handy. It's time to do to them what their extremism merits: ignore them.
Meanwhile, the rest of us have a great nation to run. (Unless you like paying nearly $100 to fill your gas tank).
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Thursday, July 10, 2008
Environmental Extremists Oppose Refinery Expansion
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1 comments:
Using the term "earth-worshipers" to describe people opposed to building refineries seems both rude and condescending, but whatever.
It seems like most people are in favor of building new refineries... as long as they build them somewhere else. From what I've heard, the majority of people opposing the Hyperion plant are doing so because they don't want to live next to one. I know someone living near a refinery in Wyoming and he's told me the air quality continually goes down and it smells bad.
I personally don't have much of an opinion about Hyperion's refinery. I think it'll be far enough away from Canton to not bother us too much. When the "Gorilla Project" was announced to be a refinery, I thought it was kinda boring. I was hoping for something really cool like a chocolate factory and or a business that makes awesome things with nanotechnology. Oh well.
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