Jeanne Shaheen latest gripe is that Oil refineries are only running at 85% efficiency, and this is more proof that the Oil companies are milking  “The Middle Class™” for profits.  It’s a sad tale Jeanne, but did you know it’s the government’s fault?

Most oil refineries have to deal with production and processing changes that keep them from running at full capacity.  State and Federal regulations have produced dozens of buffet blends of motor fuels-just for automobiles—and these can’t always be processed simultaneously.  It is therefore necessary to modify production schedules and based on changing demand for these various types of fuel.  The time lost accounts for most if not all of the missing 15% Jeanne is whining about. And what is particularly funny is that while Jeanne is crying foul about missing productivity, it is actually the burden of excessive government regulation and mandated multiple fuel standards that is almost completely responsible for it.

Now they might consider building a new refinery to process more oil, but there isn’t any “more oil” to refine.  You see a refinery costs billions.  It takes about 25 years running at a steady capacity to recover the cost of the investment.  We haven’t built a new one since 1976, and have had to close 152 of them in the intervening years.  They were old and despite advancements in efficiency, with no long term new oil to keep them operational, they just kept shutting them down and scrapping them.  Government regulation makes it expensive to run one, and more expensive to build new ones, all so the government can make twice as much profit from their output as the refinery owners themselves.  (That means that if you are one of those people whining about Big Oil, you should be whining about Big Government.) So since there isn’t anything more to refine, and there never will be (at least in America) if Democrats continue to have their way, you will never see another new refinery open, and the ones we have will steadily lose capacity and close, taking jobs and commerce with them to foreign lands.

So here’s where Jeanne’s plan really kills us.  She’s basically willing to give up any new or future tax revenue on oil (a loss of tax growth in the trillions of dollars), so she can instead fund energy alternatives which are still so unaffordable that they can’t compete without massive amounts of tax dollars to support them.  (spending tax dollars in the billions).  That’s Jeanne’s plan–less money in, more money out. 

So the real “alternative energy” solution Jeanne has in mind for us, is for Americans to pay a fortune to fund new energy while covering declining tax revenues from decreasing oil output, (and don’t forget we’ll still have to pay for all the new federal programs democrats want) or we pay a fortune for the new energy technology (and the new programs) when the government realizes it has no extra money to fund it .  Either way it’s going to cost us a fortune.  Nice “alternative.”