An oil refinery displays an American flag in Wilmington, Calif., on Sept. 21, 2022. Allison Dinner/Getty Images
Due to an archaic refining infrastructure, America’s oil industry is in the curious position of shipping much of what it extracts to foreign refineries for processing, while importing what it can’t refine from abroad.
There has not been a major new refinery built in the United States since 1977, and many existing refineries are designed to process heavy crude oil of the type extracted in Canada, Mexico, Alaska, and off the Texas coast. However, due to the rise of fracking technology, approximately 80 percent of the oil produced in the lower 48 states is now light crude, which America often ships out to Europe refineries.
