I’m intrigued by this NYT explanation: “a surprising culprit: uncertainty created by the government’s push to increase the supply of biofuels like ethanol in coming years. In his State of the Union address in January, President Bush called for a sharp increase in the use of biofuels, along with some improvement in automobile fuel efficiency to reduce America’s use of gasoline by 20 percent within 10 years. Congress is considering legislation calling for a nearly fivefold increase in the use of ethanol. That has forced many oil companies to reconsider or scale back their plans for constructing new refinery capacity. In hearings before Congress last year, oil executives outlined plans to increase fuel production by expanding existing refineries. Those plans would add capacity of 1.6 million to 1.8 million barrels a day over the next five years, for an increase of 10 percent, according to the National Petrochemical and Refiners Association. But those plans have since been scaled back to more than one million barrels a day, according to the Energy Information Administration, an arm of the federal government....”
Another way to put it: blame the enviro-craze.
