Re: CARB

[JOE FULTON <piper_pa20@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Just a note here. This ain't about AMC so Frank will
probably kill this thread soon.  Okay with me.

I have worked in environmental compliance including
having permitting assignments here in CA for the last
twenty years.  Five years of that involved writing the
application for renewal of a used oil refining permit
in the SF Bay area.  I can tell you from first hand
experience that the oil companies almost cannot build
a new refinery in California at least.  There are so
many restrictions and permit requirements that make
the task almost impossible.  Local, state,
Federal...all the governments take a shot at you.  You
can spend millions of dollars picking a site, and
filing permits, doing impact analyses, and then
someone can find a salamander, butterfly, you name it
or they find an archeological site and the natives get
restless.  It just doesn't pay.

Citizen suits can tie a project up for years,
meanwhile the whole economics of the process can
change.  It's just too hard and I don't think the oil
companies are lying when they say so.

Without "big oil" we wouldn't have gas for our cars. 
The little guy can't do it.  Naturally they play
politics, but that's the name of the game.  

Joe Fulton
Salinas, CA
> Since 1980 when you-know-who got in office, there's
> been a lot of
> -- let's use their euphemism -- 'profit taking', fat
> cats taking
> money out that was typically R&D, infrastructure,
> and that
> annoying thing called "the future".
> 
> 
> Right now big oil is claiming environmentalist
> opposition were why
> they did not build additional capacity. They were
> certainly
> opposed by 'em, sometimes rationally sometimes maybe
> not, but they
> most definitely engaged in wanton profit-taking in
> the last 20+
> years.
> 
> It might also be that they saw the writing on the
> wall; the age of
> cheap oil might actually be over now. If so, it was
> a very wise
> (for their investors) move to make, to not build.

>