As prepared for delivery
Press briefing teleconference on downstream issues
Cindy Schild, API senior refining manager
January 15, 2013
Opening statement:
Good morning, everyone. Thanks for calling in.
America’s refineries are a strategic national asset, a vital part of our nation’s energy infrastructure critical to our economic and energy security. Our state of the art refineries provide the vast majority of the gasoline, jet fuel, diesel fuel, home heating oil, and petrochemicals that Americans rely upon. They also are major employers and taxpayers. The domestic refining industry supports more than 500,000 jobs and contributes to nearly 2 percent of our GDP.
And our refineries invest billions of dollars annually to make cleaner fuels, enhance operational efficiency, and increase capacity, while meeting more stringent air quality standards. Domestic refineries help support communities across America, all while maintaining and creating jobs.
Our nation’s energy future has never looked better, in large part because of our rapidly advancing ability to tap into vast new oil and natural gas resources right here in the United States. But a strong energy future for our nation
depends also on our ability to refine and distribute the fuels from these resources.
We started running a new television ad nationwide this week to highlight the critical role of refineries to Americans and to policymakers, and launched a new campaign “Investing in America’s Future” – which will emphasize the important contributions of all segments of the oil and natural gas industry, what it means for our communities and for Americans’ lives, for our government through production and refining, and what it means for job creation.
The campaign includes TV, print, radio, and online ads running inside the Beltway and nationally. It launched today and will continue to run over the coming months.
U.S. refineries compete in a global market place. Common sense policies are vital to ensuring a competitive U.S. refining sector that will continue to invest in America’s future and continue to provide the clean burning fuels consumers use every day.
With such policies we can continue creating cleaner fuels and products in technologically advanced facilities here in the U.S. where it means jobs for Americans, and security and revenue to our government.
One place to start is repeal of the Renewable Fuels Standard or RFS.
API supports the use of renewable fuels, but the RFS is simply unworkable. Its continuing implementation requires concentrations of ethanol in gasoline above levels that are safe for vehicles and gas station pumping equipment.
The law also requires refiners to purchase credits for failing to blend cellulosic ethanol in motor fuel, even though none is commercially available. So we are, in effect, penalized for not using a fuel that doesn’t exist.
Despite repeated and ongoing efforts to address the RFS program’s shortcomings – through regulatory petitions, legal actions, and suggested solutions to implementation concerns – EPA has been unable, and sometimes unwilling, to make it workable. That’s why we need Congress to scrap the program altogether.
The fact is the program was created at a time we thought our dependence on foreign sources of oil would continue and perhaps grow. But those projections have been turned on their head as we see domestic production likely to grow for many years while imports continue to fall.
Energy policy also needs to be compatible with the need to put in place the infrastructure to bring crude oil to our refineries. A symbol of this is the Keystone XL pipeline, which could greatly expand access to both crude oil from Canada’s rich oil sands region and increasing production from the upper plains states like North Dakota. The president should approve this much-studied and delayed pipeline as soon as possible. The industry is investing in additional infrastructure expansion projects to further increase our energy and economic security.
Reasonable regulation is also critical to a thriving refining sector. EPA is issuing or could soon issue multiple regulations with onerous collective costs and restrictions that could further impact the ability of U.S. refineries to remain globally competitive.
These include the refinery greenhouse gas rules, new ambient air quality standards for ozone and fine particulates, and Tier 3 gasoline sulfur rules.
Our refinery sector has contributed greatly to the nation’s steady improvement in air quality over the decades. Since 1990, it has invested more than $137 billion meeting environmental requirements. Over that time, pollution levels for the six common air pollutants, including ozone, have substantially declined, as have total emissions of toxic pollutants.
America’s refineries are an indispensable part of the nation’s industrial base and our economic and energy security. We must do the right things to keep them strong.
Thank you, and now I’d be happy to take your questions.