Refineries await regulatory approval

To the editor:

I have to address Missouri House Speaker Rod Jetton's recently published remark blaming the lack of new oil refineries on the environmentalists who "want high gas prices because they don't want us driving cars and using oil."

While the big oil companies cry that it costs so much to meet environmental requirements, they are crying all the way to the bank. In the first quarter of 2004, ExxonMobil's profits from refining operations jumped 38.8 percent. Refining profits at ConocoPhillips grew 19.2 percent .

Mergers in the oil industry have limited the number of companies that operate refineries. They're making huge profits on the tight capacity from fewer refineries.

Since Hurricane Katrina, attention again moves to the need to build more refineries.

Republicans in the U.S. House recently pushed through legislation that could speed up the regulatory and approval processes for new refineries in certain regions of the country by construction of new refineries in areas that have an unemployment rate 20 percent higher than the national average, that have experienced massive layoffs in manufacturing or that have a closed refinery. The bill, supported by President Bush, still has to be approved by the Senate.

Crown Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia recently chided the president saying that his country could send more oil, but the United States wouldn't have the ability to refine it. Soon afterward, Bush offered to provide closed military bases for new refineries." That, Mr. Jetton, is the rest of the story.

SHARON HOPKINS, Marble Hill, Mo.