Phillips 66 announced in November 2021 that it would not reopen the Alliance refinery, which was shut in mid-August ahead of Hurricane Ida. The company ceased refinery operations at Cheyenne the following month, making it the first U.S. refinery to close in 2020. "The Houston Refinery is currently. Cinquegrana from Oil Price Information Service says that from the refiners' perspective, it doesn't make financial sense to invest in additional oil refining given the broader transition. The refinery has since been bulldozed. "The narrative until today was that we were going to be driving electric vehicles by the end of the year. When an existing oil refinery becomes defunct and needs to be repurposed, one of the over-riding priorities is to deal with the remaining waste and pollution left by what have often been decades spent refining crude oil. There are examples of this approach from across Europe: Total is planning to convert the Grandpuits refinery in France which has been temporarily shut down since February this year into a biofuels and plastics recycling complex. While the Biden administration says market manipulation by Big Oil is behind the shortage of refined fuel right now, the . The COVID pandemic really drove down gasoline and diesel demand which accelerated some things that were already happening, Geoff Moody, the vice president of government relations at the American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers, previously told TheDCNF. at its modules plant in Toledo.The plant built the one millionth Fiat 500 in November 2012. Those that remain are running at 94% capacity. Bidens letter does appear to recognize that the U.S. refining industry is already currently operating at near-full capacity as the industry has worked overtime to meet consumer demand for its products. Exacerbating these high gas prices is a huge shortage in refining capacity in the U.S., which isn't likely to be resolved any time soon. Given the highly-ideological nature of this administration and the fact that most of APIs suggestions would conflict with Bidens Green New Deal-based agenda, most if not all of them are likely to fall on deaf ears. On Twitter @colin_atagi. No profanity, hate speech or personal attacks. Given that the longer term direction of travel is away from oil and toward renewables, however, the more forward thinking companies are probably those which are pivoting their refinery sites toward renewable technologies. U.S. District Judge Terry A. Doughty in Louisiana struck down Biden's Jan. 27, 2021, executive order in June, dealing a major blow to the president's plans to cut greenhouse gas emissions from . Just last Friday, in its response to Bidens intemperate attack during a speech at the Port of Los Angeles, ExxonMobil noted that it is in the process of expanding its own refining capacity in the U.S. by 250,000 bopd. With the U.S. blocking new purchases of Russian oil, the White House, Republicans and the oil industry are engaged in a disagreement over whether the administration has hampered domestic oil. The reasons for those closures are due primarily to governments. var write_html = `