With the exception of a relatively smalll (35K b/d) refinery west-Texas refinery built in 2019, there hasn’t been a major new refinery built in the U.S. in nearly 50 years spanning both Democratic and Republican administrations. Existing refineries are running near 100 percent capacity so even if we had additional crude imports, they couldn’t be processed in the near term. The combination of a post-covid surge in demand and the loss of Russian distilled product are the primary cause of recent price spikes and it has little to do with Biden. In the longer term, however, when demand levels return to normal and Russian product is back on the market, Biden’s policies could keep prices at above market levels since his “excess profit” rhetoric and constraints on new pipelines will limit incentives for expanding U.S. refining capacity. Refiners don’t want to invest in new capacity unless they are assured of reasonable returns and those assurances are sorely lacking.
a m Condensate splitters are distillation units that process condensate, which is lighter than crude oil. Splitter capacity is included as atmospheric distillation units in U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) data.
However, the newest refinery with significant downstream unit capacity is Marathon’s facility in Garyville, Louisiana. That facility came online in 1977 with an initial atmospheric distillation unit capacity of 200,000 b/cd, and as of January 1, 2021, it had a capacity of 578,000 b/cd.