They aren't making gasoline from this crud, it's fuel oil, bunker oil... low grade stuff. The cost of making gasoline from this stuff is astronomical, whereas making fuel oil is just outrageously expensive compared to cracking it from "Brent Light Crude".
Who suffers when the price of #2 fuel oil goes up due to your suggested reduction in supply... to homes that were built to NEED this kind of heating source? Poor people, at least the ones who use #2 for heating, with government heating assistance subsidies in many parts of the country all spent. The average heating bill in California this year is $200 a month according to the SF Chronicle/PG&E. Almost a full week's pay for a minimum wage worker, and rent? Another 2-3 weeks pay, and you have a warm place to sleep... That's it. What about the folks where it's 27 degrees farenheit all winter long? That's Canada, most of it... I hope they all have high paying jobs (unlikely for any rural resident) or they'll be mortgaging their homes to heat them. Burn wood? Strip the land for every piece of scrap wood, bark, and peat until nothing remains except mineral earth? Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
Canada is the number one petroleum exporter to the USA: "Canada remained the largest exporter of total petroleum products in November, exporting 2.584 million barrels per day to the United States, which was a large increase from last month (2.144 thousand barrels per day)" (at <http://www.eia.doe.gov/pub/oil_gas/petroleum/data_publications/company_level_imports/current/import.html>). If Canadian leftists could do something about Canada's oil industry, reduce production for conservation, restrain the development of oil sands for environmental protection, step up class struggle in Canadian oil industry, or whatever, that would greatly help. -- Yoshie <http://montages.blogspot.com/> <http://mrzine.org> <http://monthlyreview.org/>
