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Always nice to read "internal documents" of dubious origin and skimmings from congressional reports.
More's the point, the US hasn't been building new refineries, nor seriously fixing old ones, for upwards of 30 years, in part because of millitant environmentalists, in part because why the fuck will they ? It's risky and expensive and the economics of 1970-2000 didn't justify it.
As to the 80-85% capacity issue - a refinery is a complex piece of machinery, and while it may have the theoretical ability to process x barels a year, going at y barels a day, you will never get that, because for a variety of reasons, repairs, safety inspections, etc, you will have to close it down sometime. To understand this, try having your car do it's maximum stated speed for one year running.
Also, the opec has nothing to do with the oil run atm. Back when they tried, they managed to get it from 20 to 50 and people were oh so impressed. Now chinese/indian demand has taken it from 30 to 120 and somehow nobody understands...
The chinese already own most of your stuff, they make most of your stuff, and they don't actually need you, your notions about freedom, your porn, your consultancy or your services.
So, we're going back to where it was in 1800s, where the brits couldn't for the life of them find anythign of value to offer in trade to the empire that "made everything that's good and useful under the sky".
Buckle up.
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