[September 19, 2026] – According to Yahoo Finance, Trump is pressing oil executives to reopen idle plants, expand existing ones, and build new refineries to lower pump prices and shore up energy security—but no large new U.S. refinery has been built since 1977, and the operating fleet is about half the 1982 count.
But more US refineries won’t bring down prices in the near term and aren’t likely to take place in the long term either.
Even a construction boom starting now would take 3+ years to expand existing units and 4–5 years for a new plant to produce gasoline and diesel, so it cannot ease current prices.
The price spike is driven more by a global refined-product squeeze than by U.S. crude: wars in Iran and Ukraine have damaged Middle East and Russian refineries, Russia has flipped from major fuel exporter to net importer, and Persian Gulf shipping disruptions (Strait of Hormuz) are cutting product exports.
ExxonMobil’s CEO says pump prices are now set by refined-product supply and demand, not crude; U.S. refining capacity actually rose 16% from 1999 to a 2019 peak of 18.6 million b/d even as plant count fell, because survivors got bigger and more efficient.
Producers see the disruption as temporary, so windfall cash is going to buybacks, dividends, exploration, and midstream (pipelines)—not multi-billion-dollar refineries that must run for decades amid uncertain demand and regulation.
Read the full story on Yahoo Finance.
