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Alan W. Dowd is a Senior Fellow with the American Security Council Foundation, where he writes on the full range of topics relating to national defense, foreign policy and international security. Dowd’s commentaries and essays have appeared in Policy Review, Parameters, Military Officer, The American Legion Magazine, The Journal of Diplomacy and International Relations, The Claremont Review of Books, World Politics Review, The Wall Street Journal Europe, The Jerusalem Post, The Financial Times Deutschland, The Washington Times, The Baltimore Sun, The Washington Examiner, The Detroit News, The Sacramento Bee, The Vancouver Sun, The National Post, The Landing Zone, Current, The World & I, The American Enterprise, Fraser Forum, American Outlook, The American and the online editions of Weekly Standard, National Review and American Interest. Beyond his work in opinion journalism, Dowd has served as an adjunct professor and university lecturer; congressional aide; and administrator, researcher and writer at leading think tanks, including the Hudson Institute, Sagamore Institute and Fraser Institute. An award-winning writer, Dowd has been interviewed by Fox News Channel, Cox News Service, The Washington Times, The National Post, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and numerous radio programs across North America. In addition, his work has been quoted by and/or reprinted in The Guardian, CBS News, BBC News and the Council on Foreign Relations. Dowd holds degrees from Butler University and Indiana University. Follow him at twitter.com/alanwdowd.

ASCF News

Scott Tilley is a Senior Fellow at the American Security Council Foundation, where he writes the “Technical Power” column, focusing on the societal and national security implications of advanced technology in cybersecurity, space, and foreign relations.

He is an emeritus professor at the Florida Institute of Technology. Previously, he was with the University of California, Riverside, Carnegie Mellon University’s Software Engineering Institute, and IBM. His research and teaching were in the areas of computer science, software & systems engineering, educational technology, the design of communication, and business information systems.

He is president and founder of the Center for Technology & Society, president and co-founder of Big Data Florida, past president of INCOSE Space Coast, and a Space Coast Writers’ Guild Fellow.

He has authored over 150 academic papers and has published 28 books (technical and non-technical), most recently Systems Analysis & Design (Cengage, 2020), SPACE (Anthology Alliance, 2019), and Technical Justice (CTS Press, 2019). He wrote the “Technology Today” column for FLORIDA TODAY from 2010 to 2018.

He is a popular public speaker, having delivered numerous keynote presentations and “Tech Talks” for a general audience. Recent examples include the role of big data in the space program, a four-part series on machine learning, and a four-part series on fake news.

He holds a Ph.D. in computer science from the University of Victoria (1995).

Contact him at stilley@cts.today.

Chevron CEO: There May Never Be Another Oil Refinery Built in US Again

Tuesday, June 14, 2022

Categories: ASCF News Energy Independence

Comments: 0

Source: https://www.theepochtimes.com/chevron-ceo-there-may-never-be-another-oil-refinery-built-in-us-again_4532440.html?slsuccess=1

The ExxonMobil Baton Rouge Refinery in Baton Rouge, La. on May 15, 2021. (Kathleen Flynn/Reuters)

Chevron CEO Mike Wirth said in a recent interview that he does not believe another oil refinery will be built again in the United States, saying that government policies are a key reason why, as average gas prices continue to rise as of Tuesday.

“There hasn’t been a refinery built in this country since the 1970s,” Wirth said during Bernstein’s Strategic Decisions Conference on June 1 when asked about more refining being added in the Gulf of Mexico. “I personally don’t believe there will be a new petroleum refinery ever built in this country again.”

Wirth added: “Capacity is added by de-bottlenecking existing units by investing in existing refineries … but what we’ve seen over the last two years are shutdowns. We’ve seen refineries closed. We’ve seen units come down. We’ve seen refineries being repurposed to become bio refineries. And we live in a world where the policy, the stated policy of the U.S. government is to reduce demand for the products that refiners produce.”

Continuing further, Wirth said that the federal government’s current policy is to reduce the demand for oil, making it “very hard” in a company “where investments have a payout period of a decade or more.”

Wirth also asked rhetorically, “How do you go to your board, how do you go to your shareholders and say ‘we’re going to spend billions of dollars on new capacity in a market that is, the policy is taking you the other direction.'”

According to data released by automotive club AAA, the average price for a gallon of gasoline stands at $5.01 per gallon nationwide, with California leading the way at $6.40 per gallon.

Gas prices were already climbing in 2021 amid higher demand and reduced supply. Last year, the Biden administration signed several executive orders to limit new oil drilling on federal lands, directing federal agencies to eliminate fossil fuel subsidies, and ending construction of the Keystone XL pipeline.

The oil supply crunch has been exacerbated by Western sanctions that were imposed on Russia, a major exporter, after its invasion of Ukraine.

In response, the Biden administration has released 180 million barrels of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve over a 6-month period starting in March.

Wirth told the conference that the oil industry has “raised our Permian [Basin] production growth outlook to 15 percent this year,” adding that the “narrative you hear that the industry is not growing production is not true. We are growing production and our industry is growing production.”

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