Refineries: The Achilles’ heel of US oil industry

NEW YORK (AFP) – Despite record profits, US oil majors have built no new refineries on American soil for 30 years, raising the country’s dependence on foreign supplies and making it vulnerable to even small accidents and bad weather.

Standing in Garyville, Louisiana, the Marathon Oil refinery is the most recently built refinery in the United States — and that was in 1976.

Since then, the number of US refineries in operation has dropped by more than half, from more than 300 in the early 1980s to fewer than 150 today.

And while these refineries’ capacities may have increased in recent years through the units’ expansion, they still fail to satisfy the voracious appetite of US car drivers and industry for oil.

AFP