I curious how these affect anything? Are you just merely stating that people are self interested?

Who trying to build it and why in a low population/distribution area such as the Dakotas? Everything I read about the oil business points to refinery capacity being adequate for US gasoline/diesel consumption through 2012. The gasoline futures market fluctuates on refineries being shut down for maintenance/weather conditions (hurricanes), a normal circumstance, but there's no demand for capital to build new ones due to the long capital recovery time and perceived peak oil.

New refineries wouldn't lower the pump cost of gasoline/diesel, that's dictated by crude oil markets, not refineries, so why would anyone want to build them? If they were needed Bush Sr is in the refinery business and I can't imagine anyone stopping his group from building as many as they desired in Louisiana, New Jersey or Texas.

good luck getting to work on your sailboat.

__________________
I think at this point there needs to be a focus on an immediate increase in spending and I think this is a time when deficit fear has to take a second seat . . . I believe later on there should be tax increases. Speaking personally, I think there are a lot of very rich people out there whom we can tax at a point down the road and recover some of the money."
-- Barney Frank, October 20, 2008