The US imports <1% of its gasoline: https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/pet_sum_snd_a_epm0f_mbbl_a_cur.... (compare ~39M barrels of gasoline imported versus 3,477M barrels produced domestically). The US is in fact a net exporter of refined petroleum products, which means we (on net) buy crude oil to refine it in the country for other countries to use.
And our big refineries are often not in remote areas either.
If you look at the top 5 refineries[1] they're relatively near population centers in the hundreds of thousands to millions of people (ex. Baton Rouge, New Orleans, Houston), and 4 of them are a football field away from residential neighborhoods.
Refineries have cleaned up. 30 years ago the area 10 miles around stunk. They figured the EPA fines were a cost of business. However they have changed, and have cleaned up so that they never pay fines.
The above is about a specific refinery I know of. There are more than 100 in the US with different management.
The US uses Louisiana and Eastern Texas as the places that bare the burden of environmental contamination from oil refinement since they have fewer restrictions on pollution.
The #1 most horrifying thing I ever saw as a child was a tour through Monsanto's factory in Louisiana. It's where the company manufactures Roundup. .75 pounds of the stuff can kill an acre of vegetation. This place had thousands of huge barrels of the chemical. The right hurricane or tornado could send that crap flying everywhere for miles before it could get cleaned up, and the refinery is huddled up against the Mississippi river to boot.
it’s like, “let’s let another country bare the burden/suffer”
we pay for the luxury i guess
at least that’s how i understood it, could be wrong, would love to learn otherwise