Environmental Policy Essay

Environmental Policy

The Environmental Policy that I would like to change is dealing with the constructing of new oil refineries. This would start with an Energy Policy that clearly cuts back the United States government regulation (EPA) and creates economic growth (boom) and reduce the unemployment within the United States Two decades ago, 158 refineries operated in the United States and its territories and sporadic refinery outages led many policy makers to advocate new refinery construction. By current count, 124 refineries now produce fuel in addition to 13 refineries that produce lubricating oils and asphalt. In the past the EPA has heavily regulated the building of new refineries to the point where oil companies would rather build refineries in other, less regulated countries. Some of the regulations are listed below. Since the Clean Air Act Amendments, 15 distinctly formulated boutique fuels are required in portions of 12 states. H.R. 392, the Boutique Fuel Reduction Act of 2009, would further amend` the Clean Air Act to add temporary waivers for boutique fuels due to unexpected problems with distribution and give EPA authority to reduce the number of boutique fuels. The 2005 Energy Policy Act created the Renewable Fuel Program to substitute increasing volumes of renewable fuel for gasoline. The 2007 Energy Independence and Security Act expanded the program to cover transportation fuels in general, extended the program to calendar year 2022. (Armistead, Tom. The Energy Report Tue, 18 June 2013) Most of the crude that comes from North America, whether oil sands in Canada or oil shale in the U.S., is landlocked. That makes it very attractive for the refiners in the midcontinent to take advantage of the abundance of a variety of crude oils and convert them into refined products. Refined product prices are based on Brent crude, so the manufacturing cost of the products is much lower in the U.S. than in any other part of the world. This, coupled with declining domestic petroleum demand, turned the U.S. from a net importer of

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