The Financial Times finds that “Europe has been forced to
spend 10 per cent more on oil than the US in the first half of this
year because its refineries are too unsophisticated to process cheap,
low-quality crude.”

Buried lede:

“European refineries, in contrast, had concentrated their investment in recent years on complying with strict new environmental regulations.”

An added bonus in a sidebar — refining capacity cannot meet the oil
available, so the industry has requested only 11 million gallons of the
30 million gallons offered by the Bush administration from the Stragic
Petroleum Reserve.