I read law cases and industry/govt reports. Where do you get your information??
Education: http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/ieo/oil.html which is the International Energy Outlook 2007 for the US Govt.
Not in my backyard is alive and well. I can present dozens of lawsuits, any other govt roadblocks against oil companies that tie up capital for decades when they wanted to build a new refinery. Why bother to try? Here is one case in Arizona.
http://www.econbrowser.com/archives/...hould_pay.html

"Production and refinery production challenges: Half the refineries that operated in the U.S. in 1976 have since been closed without a single new one built. Arizona Clean Fuels finally gave up in 2003 on their efforts to get all the permits for construction of a new one in Maricopa County, Arizona, and instead acquired property in nearby Yuma County for which they finally succeeded in obtaining the necessary permits from the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. However, this month the plan ran into a new roadblock from a lawsuit filed by the Quechan Indian Tribe, whose reservation is apparently 40 miles away from the planned refinery. The Associated Press carried this story:

The Quechan Tribe has filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court here that claims the federal government did an inadequate environmental review of artifacts and cultural resources before transferring the land.

The 3,500-member tribe wants to "prevent further destruction of Quechan cultural sites and resources" and force the federal government to follow environmental- and historic-preservation laws that govern such land transfers, according to tribal attorney Frank Jozwiak. Once the tribe is satisfied that its historical and cultural interests are identified and appropriate steps are in place to protect and preserve those interests, Jozwiak said the tribe will not oppose the land transfer or the refinery.

The above AP story also reported that the District Court judge had ordered a temporary halt to construction....."

Here is an MSNBC report awhile back http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6019739/
"But the solution — boosting refining capacity to allow a greater margin for error — isn’t easy. There hasn’t been a new refinery built in the U.S. since 1976, the result of extremely tight environmental restrictions, not-in-my-back-yard community opposition, and the high cost of new construction. Used refineries currently sell for about 30 to 50 percent of the cost of building a new one, so it’s cheaper to buy an old refinery and upgrade it. Or squeeze a little more gasoline out of the refineries you already own.

Expansion of refining capacity is also made more difficult because oil refineries are a lot more complicated to build and operate than your average widget factory. For starters the raw material — crude oil — has many different properties, from thickness to sulfur content, so not all refineries can blend just any barrel of crude."