America's oil refining industry is being strangled by environmental regulations.

• It has been more than 20 years since a new refinery was built in this country and industry experts say none will be built anytime soon, if ever.

• In the past 15 years, 130 gasoline refiners have been driven out of operation -- 33 in the last eight years.

• Some remain in business only because it would be too expensive to shut down -- the potential cleanup liabilities are too daunting.

Environmental regulations are driving up refining costs on one side, while potential environmental cleanup costs are driving down the price of refineries for sale on the market.

• It was reportedly worth $100 million to Chevron to be relieved of environmental liability when it sold its Philadelphia plant to Sun Oil in 1994.

• When Tosco corp. acquired British Petroleum's refinery near Philadelphia, it got the assets for a song.

• As major oil companies withdraw from the U.S. refining market, they are selling refining facilities for 10 percent of the replacement cost.

Most of the new money coming into the industry goes for keeping up with environmental rules and regulations -- only incidentally directed to increasing output.

In California, clean air standards that went into effect this spring require use of a more expensive gasoline blend, so it has experienced the greatest gasoline price increases -- 35 percent in the past few months. State environmental standards have devastated its oil industry.

• The state's 11 surviving refiners have invested a total of $4.5 billion to meet the new mandates there.

• Four other firms mothballed their plants, knocking 183,000 barrels a day out of production -- one-fifth of statewide gasoline consumption.

• With the industry running full-tilt just to keep up with demand, incidents such as two recent fires at major California refineries jeopardize vital supplies to consumers.

Nationwide, refineries are running at 95 percent of capacity -- up from 69 percent a decade ago.

Gasoline demand continues to grow, and there's plenty of oil to satisfy it. But since the regulatory costs of running a refinery are 25 percent lower in Western Europe and Canada -- and nonexistent in much of the developing world -- the U.S. refining industry may be heading off-shore, taking thousands of jobs with it.

Source: Holman W. Jenkins Jr., "Gas Pumps Ring Up Environmental Costs," Wall Street Journal, May 7, 1996.