alt Hacker News> they're almost impossible to get permission to build now
While I do agree there's a ton of regulatory hurdle to cross to build a new refinery, lots of interviews with oil executives have stated the economics of building a new refinery aren't always great. The reasons why they aren't building isn't necessarily because the regulatory hurdles are too high, its that they don't think they'll end up making any money building them. The future demand of many refined products are uncertain, adding a lot of new capacity is quite a capital risk.
I'd love to see a lot of our ancient refineries shut down and replaced with far more modern designs, but the oil industry isn't going to do it because it probably won't be profitable.
It will be interesting to see the economics of these few new refineries coming online actually play out in the coming years.
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>While I do agree there's a ton of regulatory hurdle to cross to build a new refinery, lots of interviews with oil executives have stated the economics of building a new refinery aren't always great. The reasons why they aren't building isn't necessarily because the regulatory hurdles are too high, its that they don't think they'll end up making any money building them. The future demand of many refined products are uncertain, adding a lot of new capacity is quite a capital risk.
This is a circular statement.
The regulatory hurdles are a large part of what drive cost.
I know a venue that wants to pave a dirt lot so they can better use it for stuff. It doesn't pencil out because of stupid stormwater permitting crap that'll add $250k to the project. It'd never pay off in a reasonable timeframe. So it just continues to exist in its current grandfathered in capacity when even the most unfavorable napkin math shows that what they want is an improvement.
A few weeks ago I was party to the installation of a perimeter railing on a flat commercial roof. The railing cost more than the rest of the job it was there for. Something tells me they won't be pulling permits for petty electrical work ever again.
Oil and most other heavy industry is faced with the same sort of problems with more digits in front of the decimal.
Well-meaning legislation (eg CEQA in CA) is effectively weaponized by NIMBYs who have outsized power to add years if not a decade or more to something getting built. There is also an overly naive, even performative opposition to anything fossil fuel related without having a substitute (again, I say this as a particularly pro-solar person). This adds significantly to costs.
I'm also anti-nuclear because it's too expensive, not as safe as advocates make out and the waste problem is not even remotely solved despites all the claims to the contrary. But it's also true that the same kind of anti-development tactics used against refineries are effectively used against nuclear plants such that it takes 15+ years to build a nuclear plant and the costs balloon as a result.
But there's also strong direct evidence contrary to your claim: the new refineries in Oklahoma and Texas. Why are they getting built if "the oil industry isn't going to do it"?
I'll go even further than this: if private industry won't build new refineries, the government should. In fact, that's my preferred outcome anyway.