Bush's plan to build new refineries on old military bases

President Bush’s proposal to build new refineries on abandoned military bases sounds quite desperate for someone having spent much of his life in the oil “bidness” in Texas. It has all the trappings of “let’s throw it against the wall and see if it sticks” political thinking by people who have no clue what to do to lower gasoline prices at the pump.
Aside from the shocking visual of belching smoke coming from places like Kelly AFB in San Antonio, or in the mountain states or at the Presidio in San Francisco, there are two practical problems.
First, it will take years to build refineries and will do nothing to halt the march toward $3 per gallon of unleaded gas. It simply isn’t practical and other options would be smarter.
Second … while it is true that the U.S. NEEDS more refining capacity, there probably ARE abandoned refineries that can be refurbished sooner than building new ones.
Point of example: I used to live in the small town Texas town of Nixon, 50 miles east of San Antonio and there, in a city of less than 2,000 where poultry processing is the major source of revenue, sits a refinery – closed for several years.
Built in the early 1970s, it was the first minority-owned refinery, financed by the Small Business Administration. Sadly, the truth revealed the owners to be fronts for a Dutch oil company, needing to get its hands on U.S. refineries (illegal at that time).
The refinery, which closed in the early 1980s during the recession, shut down a second time after the faux owners were indicted on federal fraud charges and the whole thing fell apart as the price of oil dropped like the temperature in Alaska in January.
There must be other small communities with idle refineries, made dormant because of economic conditions. However, many oil companies seem unwilling to invest big gobs of money to update these places (meeting stricter EPA standards), regardless of the price of crude.
THAT is where ONE solution lies. Then many capped wells will re-open when it becomes profitable to refine.
Perhaps NOT holding hands like a little girl with the Crown Price of Saudi Arabia would be a symbolic start to a practical solution. The image does NOTHING to dissuade critics who claim that the Bush family is in bed or cahoots with the Saudis.
After all, you go from holding hands (first base) to who knows what. But if the metaphor fits, and hitting home plate is you-know-what, then that’s already happened to many Americans, who are tired of getting screwed in the wallet.
Which is located too close to your …