Canada

This is what I don't get about Alberta. They've always been talking about the oil sands and exploiting their resources, yet why are they always satisfied with simply pumping and piping? Why has there never been a voice for making local refineries so that they can jack up the prices of their tar sands? Why have they been satisfied being used like a third world country when they're always being compared to Texas, that has most of the US's refineries. Why are they happy feeding Texan refineries instead of selling refined products to the entire world at several times the current prices?

Hell, not only raising export prices, but adding a massive number of local jobs as well, instead of giving away such easy jobs to a foreign country? It's not like you need an army of university graduates to operate a a refinery. Most of the jobs there only require a slightly higher level of education as for the tar sands.

I kinda like pet-chem if we're going to do more upgrading - and sure enough we're seeing activity in the space.

Refineries produce gasoline (for old cars), diesel (for old trucks), and oils (there's alternatives). Refineries are for antiquated tech that were trying to phase out IMO.

Upgrading light ends (methane, ethane, propane, etc) are what I'd be investing in if I was looking at fossil fuels investment. We have LOTS of gas plants sweetening and fractionating that stuff so the product streams are there and the emissions intensity of that end is WAY better than liquids.

Dow is building a huge ethane cracker to produce polyethylene. IPL has the Heartland petrochemical complex that's going to be soaking up immense amounts of propane to produce polypropylene pellets. I haven't checked what Nova is up to lately, but I can promise you they're looking to grow in the space.

I don't love polymers, but we COULD recycle it if we were smart and unlike combustion where everything ends up in the atmosphere, a landfill full of plastic is actually carbon sequestration when you think about it.

Methane (natural gas) is worth approximately nothing at the moment, but coastal LNG exports will help China et al. ween off coal while they continue to build out renewables and Europe needs LNG for similar reasons and timescales.

Source - random internet person