Gas Prices Up on U.S. Refining Success

Gasoline prices have gone up for 20 consecutive days (although not here in Utah). Two explanations. "Pessimist": Three refineries are offline, Iran tensions and foreign oil prices are up. "Optimist": Gasoline is manufactured from oil. The U.S. has two thing going. Natural gas prices in the U.S. (but not elsewhere) have gone down 80%, so the energy cost of refining has gone down. Also, our refineries have become ultra efficient. We used to be net importers of gasoline. Now we are net exporters. While the rest of the world processes the relatively expensive Brent and Omani crude through high-cost refining, we put the cheaper WTI and heavy crude through a low-cost refining process. We also throw off cheaper ethylene for plastics production. We have become the China of refined energy markets.
Instead of Solyndra, we should reward Apache Corp, Valero and Dow Chemical.