In the long term, refiners need to keep two things in mind. First, a refinery won't just produce fuels; it will produce energy and chemicals. Second, the interaction of economic and environmental concerns will significantly affect how the hydrocarbon processing industry does business.

Near term, much of the refining industry's investment over the next five years will be committed to resolving environmental issues. Some of this investment will be for reducing emissions from the refinery itself, but much more will be allocated to make lower sulfur fuels, replace MTBE in gasoline and deal with other potential issues such as a lower level of benzene in gasoline.