Hot Air » Blog Archive » Obama’s populist rhetoric returns

Oil companies haven’t built refineries in 30 years not because they want to keep profits high, but because environmentalists won’t let them build refineries. Every time one gets proposed, a blizzard of lawsuits and regulatory hurdles follow, eventually making the construction of refineries impossible to justify. Oil companies would much rather refine oil for consumption domestically, but thanks to these burdens, we now have to import — at greater cost — 20% of the refined gasoline we use, as well as 70% or more of our crude oil.

Beyond that, the waitress/oil company argument says something more. Obviously, we sympathize with the waitress, but does that mean we hobble oil companies, especially when the pricing of oil has little to do with the corporations and everything to do with international supply and demand? We could in fact help both the “waitress” and the American oil companies by expanding domestic production, which would create American jobs and allow American oil companies to compete better against the massive, state-owned foreign oil companies around the world.