Political Quotes

“If I get this right, we send him our dollars, he sells us the oil, we put the oil in our airplanes and go bomb him. Have I got that right? We buy his oil, fill our planes, and go bomb him. What kind of a foreign policy is that? He has us over a barrel, and it is a barrel of oil. Another issue that is conveniently forgotten is refinery supply. Supply of crude oil is not the only issue. Even if we had more, we don't currently have the capacity to refine it. That is what is wrong with releasing oil from SPR. We don't have the ability for our refineries to take more product currently. That is unfortunate, but it is a reality. We had a hearing this morning. The industry said they are up to maximum capacity with refinery utilization at 96 percent. We haven't built a new refinery for nearly a quarter century. We have had 36 refineries closed in this country in the last 10 years. This is due to EPA regulations. We have the issue of reformulated gas. We have nine different geographical reformulated gasolines in this country. The necessity of that is the dictate from EPA. I am not going to go into that, but fuels made for Oregon are not suitable for California; fuels made for Maryland can't be sold in Baltimore; Chicago fuels can't be sold in Detroit. We are making designer gasoline.”