I have worked in the downstream for many years. Since very little refining capacity has been added in North America over the last 35 years (basically just de-bottlenecking), investment in capacity is a good idea. Crack spreads are bound to get better when economy picks up. The part that bothers me is the size of the refinery, even with the proposed expansion. Refineries of this size were all closed over the past 30 years due to lack of economies of scale. The minimum size these days is considered to be 100,000 bbls per day. It would be very expesive for a company of CLL's size to expand to this size, but it would make more sense in the long run.

Retired14