I never about gasoline prices. I about dumb policies that are more political manuevering than effective. Look and you will not find any post where I complain that gasoline is too expensive. It is what it is, and I understand enough economics to know why.
The primary driver in the cost of gasoline is not refineries. It is the cost of oil. Don't take my word for it, ask the cost accountants that work for the big oil companies. I loved my cost accounting course, and understand exactly what drives the price of a gallon of gas. It is all in the financial reports, if you know where to look.
Lastly:
New refineries are a bad idea, in the US or anywhere. Any short-term economic benefit you might get out of reducing the cost of gasoline, is more than out-weighed by the extremely toxic pollution that results from even the clean refineries in the US.
If you want more refineries, then you need to start drinking the groundwater downstream from them. The long term costs of these ecological monstrosities is not to be underestimated in terms of damage to the only national resource that matters in the long run: people.
I will make you a deal.
On my next trip to houston, I will randomly (heh) sample some well water from nearby refineries, and fill up 100 large water containers of 5 gallons each with this water. I will drop these containers off at your house, and if you drink all 500 gallons at one glass per meal, I will then advocate the relaxation of environmental standards to enable new refineries being built.
I may be a " ing trip", but I *know* that you will not take me up on this, because we both know how polluting they are.
I am reminded of a former friend with epilepsy. He is (SURPISE!) from a small town downstream from some sort of refining facility. He has epilepsy, as so a freakishly large percentage of his high-school classmates. The rest of the town also has an abnormally high percentage of people with brain cancers.
This is simple anecdotal evidence with no scientific support, but I don't need to spend millions of dollars to know that I would never take the above challenge.
I am 100% serious about my offer of getting the water for you. Let me know where to drop it off, and I will spend my weekends getting the water to poison you.
When you decline my offer be sure to add the word "hypocrite" to your siggy.