California Gov. Gavin Newsom prioritized politics over policy while hurling repeated insults at opponents of a bill he signed into law Monday in an effort to combat rising gas prices, the leader of an energy trade group said.
Shortly after lawmakers passed a law to rein in gas prices, which gives regulators the authority to require that refineries keep a certain amount of fuel on hand in an effort to keep prices low when refineries go offline for maintenance, Newsom blasted oil companies and the Western States Petroleum Association (WSPA), a trade association, for allegedly spreading “mistruths” and engaging in “manipulation.”
“Particularly WSPA and their talking points and big oil that knowingly continues to lie to the people,” Newsom said while flanked by lawmakers in Sacramento, highlighting the struggles many Californians feel at the pump.
“The struggles many Californians feel at the pump” are 100% due to California Democrat energy and environmental malfeasance. Due to California’s special blend requirements, most of the gasoline consumed in California has to be refined in California…. Yet California’s political hostility is driving oil refiners to leave the state…
Why are all the oil refineries leaving California, and is it time to do something about it
Another oil refinery will soon be closing in California.
That’s in addition to a refinery already scheduled to close before the end of this year, 2025.just a few months from now.
Wednesday’s announcement now setting off alarm bells in Sacramento, throughout the state… and beyond.
“Our fuel supply is in jeopardy,” cautioned valley Congressman Vince Fong. “This is not a distant concern. This is not an academic conversation. This is happening right now!”
[…]
“It’s clear that the political environment in California has been hostile to refiners, and the state badly needs to revise its mentality or face a declining number of refineries and higher prices.”
It was a sentiment that was echoed by valley congressman Vince Fong.
“This is something that is not created by the market,” Fong asserted. “This is something that is directly caused by Gavin Newsom’s poor energy policies.”
Retail prices for regular grade gasoline in California are consistently higher than in any other state in the continental United States, often exceeding the national average by more than a dollar per gallon. Several factors contribute to this high price, including state taxes and fees, environmental requirements, special fuel requirements, and isolated petroleum markets.
Taxes and fees The components of retail gasoline prices are taxes and fees, distribution and marketing, refining costs, and crude oil prices. Drivers in California pay the highest taxes at the pump, equivalent to $0.90 per gallon (gal) between local, state, and federal taxes as of March 2025.
Federal taxes—which are the same for each state—account for $0.18 of the $0.90/gal in taxes. The other $0.72/gal is made up of state excise tax ($0.60/gal), state sales tax ($0.10/gal), and an underground storage tank fee ($0.02/gal). California’s state gasoline excise tax is the highest in the United States; the average across all states is $0.28/gal.
Environmental requirements In addition to state taxes, the California Energy Commission estimates that environmental compliance costs added as much as $0.54/gal as of March 2025. The state’s Cap-and-Trade Program and Low Carbon Fuel Standard reflect costs associated with fuel supplier emissions and carbon intensity, and these costs are ultimately reflected in the price consumers pay at the pump.
Special fuel requirements California also mandates a special blend of gasoline designed to reduce pollution and improve air quality. This fuel burns cleaner but is more expensive to produce because it requires more processing steps and expensive blending components.
Refiners outside the state only make this blend to supply California’s market, meaning that California primarily relies on in-state refineries for its gasoline supply.
Isolated petroleum markets Supply side issues also contribute to higher California gasoline prices relative to the rest of the country.
Most of the gasoline consumed in California is refined within the state due to lack of petroleum infrastructure connections. California is geographically isolated from other U.S. refining centers because no pipelines supply California from across the Rocky Mountains and only a limited number of pipelines deliver to the West Coast from the Gulf Coast. Of the refineries outside of California with physical access to the state’s gasoline markets, only a few can meet California’s stringent fuel blending requirements.
California also imports gasoline from other countries, such as India and South Korea, to meet its fuel supply needs. Other countries produce California-specification gasoline, but high shipping costs usually limit imports to periods of refinery outages or the summer driving season.
In addition, West Coast refineries have historically maintained lower inventory levels compared with the U.S. average, and California refineries have been closing, with more closures on the horizon. All of these supply chain issues mean that California gasoline prices are more volatile and subject to large spikes, especially if any of the limited number of refineries go offline for maintenance or have an unexpected outage.
Principal contributors: Anne Miranda, Tara Bennett-Chirico
The only area in which California prices are lower than the national average is in distribution & marketing. I have to assume that this is due to the fact that California has no Buc-ees stores.
But… Newsom will fix this problem by getting rid of gasoline powered automobiles…
California Just Banned Gas-Powered Cars. Here’s Everything You Need to Know
What about hybrids? Can I still buy a used gas-powered car? An FAQ to navigating the EV future.
And that price is already expected to rise faster than the national average…
Regions with already high electricity prices may see larger increases
Although we expect the nominal U.S. average electricity price to increase by 13% from 2022 to 2025, our forecasts for retail electricity price increases differ across the country. Residential electricity prices in the Pacific, Middle Atlantic, and New England census divisions—regions where consumers already pay much more per kilowatthour for electricity—could increase more than the national average. By comparison, residential electricity prices in areas with relatively low electricity prices may not increase as much.
California is in the Pacific census division. US EIA
Unsurprisingly, the CEO of PG&E says that increased electricity demand will actually lower prices…
PG&E CEO: Optimistic About California’s Clean Energy Future
April 30, 2025
Closing out this year’s keynote addresses, Patti Poppe, CEO of Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E) delivered a message of optimism about California’s clean energy transition, highlighting real progress in infrastructure, safety, and innovation. Framed by the urgency of climate change and the growing threat of wildfires, the speaker laid out a clear case for why decarbonizing the state’s energy and transportation systems is both possible and economically viable.
[…]
A central focus was the “duck curve,” which shows excess solar generation during the day and steep evening demand peaks. Fleet electrification — especially for vehicles with predictable usage patterns like school buses — presents a perfect solution.
[…]
According to Poppe, contrary to popular belief, increased electrification could actually lower energy costs, with grid usage at only about 55% of its capacity. With the increasing energy demand from electric vehicles and data centers, Poppe pointed out that fixed costs can be spread across more usage, lowering the cost per unit of electricity for everyone.
“It’s like splitting a pizza,” she explained. “Five people pay $10 each. Ten people? Just $5.”
Does a pizza really cost $50 in California? However, this does capture socialist logic in a nutshell. Instead of making a bigger pizza, just cut it up into smaller slices. The obvious solution to the “duck curve” is for government to create more electricity demand during the periods of excess solar generation…
SACRAMENTO, CA – U-Haul has named Governor Gavin Newsom its Salesperson of the Year for the third year in a row after a record-setting sales quarter.
“We are astounded by the growth we’ve seen in California,” said U-Haul’s Western Regional Director Fennick Buggstein. “Thanks to Gavin Newsom, literally every middle-class family has moved out of the state! It’s been impossible to keep up with demand! Also, most of our workers left the state too, which kind of stinks.”
High gasoline prices are not a bug, it’s a feature. The Green Blob wants to encourage conservation, so jacking up prices the peasants pay is a goal.
All they need are sturdy sandals while they wait around for mass transit.
High prices are how the market signals shortages.
They cause consumers to cut back and producers to increase production. Resulting in the shortage going away.
Likewise, low prices are the signal of a surplus.
But the majority of California voters keep re-electing them. Partly because the captured media aren’t telling the whole story, partly because the voters don’t inform themselves, and partly because the California voters love the “free everything” Government. (Except for gasoline.)
Free everything? There must be another reason. I live here, have since I was 6, and my 10’s of thousands of dollars per year of state taxes gets me nothing but bad roads and more taxes. I’d move if I could, but I can’t (so you people who think I’d vote lib if I came to your state can save it.)
If we ever get a fair election, paper ballots and citizens only, California will be red.
Marty
May 15, 2025 2:34 pm
What is the matter with the people in California? There was once a joke as to where the people of California came from. The joke goes that once a long time ago the country tilted and everything that was loose rolled and rattled into California. The people there seem to be suckers for every Progressive scam. State motto: We virtue signal.
California’s growth was the result of greater freedom. Now peple have been bailing out of California, many to Texas.
mleskovarsocalrrcom
May 15, 2025 2:39 pm
California is regulating itself out of business. Unfortunately the closer it gets to its’ nirvana the less likely it will have the tax base to support it.
MarkW
May 15, 2025 2:45 pm
When the government sets a legal “minimum” amount of anything, then that amount becomes the new zero.
Using made up numbers.
Lets say that prior to this bill, whenever supplies dropped below 1 million gallons, then prices would start rising as oil companies tried to make sure that supplies didn’t go down to zero.
Now the government says, in its infinite stupidity, that in order to keep prices low, we will mandate that oil company stocks can never drop below 1 million gallons, thus prices won’t rise.
The reality is, that since the stocks can’t drop below 1 million, as soon as actual stocks drop below 2 million gallons, prices start rising so that the company never drops below the new floor of 1 million gallons.
Add to that, the cost of maintaining 1 million gallons of gas, that you aren’t allowed to sell.
That’s the really dumb part, maintaining a reserve which can’t be sold. If the state ordered everyone to keep 5 gallons of milk in the fridge, everyone would have 5 gallons of putrid milk taking up space.
I swear these clowns can’t think past the end of their nose. Straight price controls look sane in comparison.
It’s like splitting a pizza. One that fell on the floor, and you have shovel the toppings back on as best you can, and you still have to pay – wait, what? $50 for pizza? Yikes.
But California is (much) bigger than Germany, the 6th biggest country in Europe. Sweden is the 5th biggest country in Europe, and California is very nearly as large. Having lived in Southern California for 28 years, I can attest to the amount of driving the average person has to do. I put 37,000 miles a year on every car I owned, as did my wife: total 74,000 car-miles per year for a family of four. Today I live in Northern Virginia. I bought my last vehicle in 2021, and it just passed 43,400 miles. Over half of that was accumulated traveling to visit relatives in Tennessee, Indiana, Maryland and Missouri. Without that, I would have put only about 5,000 miles per year on that vehicle. California is just much bigger than most countries in Europe. Hell, I lived in San Bernardino County and that’s just a little smaller than Croatia! I doubt if any European country averages as many road miles per year as California.
President Barack Obama’s Energy secretary unwittingly created a durable GOP talking point in September 2008 when he talked to The Wall Street Journal about the benefits of having gasoline prices rise over 15 years to encourage energy efficiency.
“Somehow,” Chu said, “we have to figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe.”
Chu, a Nobel-winning physicist and director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, was not yet a member of the not-yet-in-existence Obama administration. But Republican politicians and conservative pundits have seized on his words as evidence that the White House is deliberately driving gasoline prices higher — ensuring that Chu’s remarks are the energy policy sound bite that will not die.
Newt Gingrich was the latest to jump on the bandwagon, telling CBS’s “This Morning” on Tuesday that Obama’s “outrageously anti-American” energy policy is aimed at increasing the price at the pump.
“Chu, his Energy secretary, said in 2008 he wanted gasoline prices to get to the European level, which is $9 or $10 a gallon,” Gingrich said.
I’ll see your $9 a gallon for gas and raise with the average house cost in Los Angeles of $1 million USD. Just wait, California will surpass your cost of gas, if you can get it at all, in a few years. And be proud of it. One party states have no competition for stupidity.
Commifornia is almost exactly 10X the size of the Netherlands with little or no reliable mass transit!
Many workers there have to drive an hour or more to commute because they cannot afford to live anywhere close to their job due to highly inflated housing prices!
Generally it is a good idea to put the brain in gear first, before commenting; as I have found on occasion when suffering a sleep or caffeine deficiency. Good luck with the EU shutting down your farms, and pushing you into the Nut Zero, though. Maybe by 2044, the 100th anniversary of D-Day, we will be in a position to liberate you from the totalitarian regime rising in Brussels!
Are you happy paying “between $8.50 and $9 per gallon”? Wouldn’t you like the opportunity to pay less? Ok then, thanks for making our point for us.
spetzer86
May 15, 2025 5:38 pm
I just keep waiting for CA to go belly up. The shift to EVs, assuming they don’t suddenly have an awakening to the stupidity, will surely doom their power grid. Their ever-increasing minimum wage won’t help when businesses can’t afford to employ people. It’s a truly sad state.
The ‘local’ taxes must be a state average. I know of one bay area bridge where the gas is $.50 more on one side than the other.
lazosvetlo
May 15, 2025 9:10 pm
California also has the 4th or 5th largest petroleum reserves in the US. However, to signal our “green virtue”, we continue to shut down the oil wells. In the 1980s, we produced 95% of our petroleum needs in the state. Today, despite lower demands, we import up to 65% of our crude oil needs from South America, Africa & the Middle East. These are from countries with much lower environmental standards than California. On top of that, the emissions of those oil tankers coming to California…
Despite all appearances, this “green virtue signaling” of Gavin Newsom, the Dems and a bunch of alphabet agencies keeps our oil and energy prices through the roof affecting the poor, minorities, women and children and the marginalized the most, the very same people that seem to keep voting these defuses back into office year after year.
The real crisis in California isn’t about climate change but about energy poverty and Sacramento is doing its part to keep that crisis going passing the blame and laughing all the way to the bank with our money.
It’s time to send mirrors to Gavin Newsom and his cronies so that they can finally see the real reason we’re all being impacted by their ignorant policies, laws, taxes, fees and plundering of the people of California.
When you actually learn that the Brown family holds exclusive rights for the import of Indonesian oil (and has since the 1960’s) and that the Getty family(Newsom’s adoptive parents) holds exclusive rights to the import of Ecuadorian oil, the largest importer, it becomes clear why California won’t allow pumping or other imports of oil from other states.
32 years of Brown and Newsom governors is a long time to enrich themselves.
Rod Evans
May 15, 2025 11:12 pm
California is the example of a state progressing anti free market policies. The alternative to a free market, is a controlled or command market, usually/traditionally called communism.
Make no mistake, what we are seeing across the Western World and well evidenced by California is Gramsci’s communist ‘Long March Through the Institutions’. When people ask why do government keep doing these crazy things, it is worth noting who does not complain. The media do not complain they are already captured by the long marchers. The academics do not complain, they are another institution captured by Gramsci’s generations long policy. The recipients of hand outs from the state are not complaining, they hang in there while the free loading lasts. The ones who are complaining are the tax payers and they are leaving helped by U-Haul to a better place, a fairer place where reward for effort is still seen as a positive.
When the street clutter and deprivation of drug addled society becomes untenable, then the free loaders will also leave or they will simply fade away dying out in their rotten squalor. A squalor enabled by unfair taxation and socialist ideology gone wrong as it always does…
Someone with the ability to communicate with Newsom and his ilk need to get through to them, the experiment has been run and the result is, it does not work.
It has to be a free market or there is no market.
Without a market i.e. buying and selling to meet the needs/desires of society there is simply managed decline..it is that simple.
As Churchill remarked when asked about capitalism. He said, capitalism is terrible, but it is better than other options. “The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings. The inherent virtue of Socialism is the equal sharing of miseries.” Winston Churchill .
Go long on U-Haul.
nyeevknoit
May 16, 2025 4:53 am
The high prices for electicity are tragic (criminal?) in the Mid-Atlantic.
PJM grid area had massive coal production in West Central Pennsylvania with large (40%) industrial base in Pa Electric area. Industies’ large demand and energy usage kept prices as low as $.02/kWhr through the 1980’s. Now we pay $.16-.20+) and more coming.
Separating utilities from generation and transmission (thanks Jimmy and FERC), along with massive industry collapse (inflation, recession, regulations) destroyed the industrial base and 100 thousand livlihoods , and leaving the residential customers with higher bills for the distribution system and costs formerly allocated to and borne by industrial customers. The distribution system is the highest cost per kWhr for capital and maintenance expenses. And now utiities are asking for 19% increases–costs have no where else to go but homeowners and businesses and hospitals and schools….
Rapidly rising costs have been caused by the “green” scam and a series of complacent governors and legislators. Texas and Europe have finally realized wind and solar leach off the exisiting reliable capacity and reduce stability, reliability and availability of the grid–threatening life and livlihoods with blackouts.
Now, the coal plants are being destroyed, the nuclear plants have been mostly shut down, while the entire area is sitting on massive gas and coal supplies.
Where to from here?
More poor. Less productive jobs. Hardships for all.
A wasteland of failed policies.
Coach Springer
May 16, 2025 5:36 am
California “may” not be populated by idiots. It might just be political mass psychosis instead. At any rate and notwithstanding a dear friend who lives in Bakersfield and can’t understand why he pays so much for gasoline being near oil fields and refineries, y’all deserve what you get.
Giving_Cat
May 16, 2025 10:24 am
There was a time when California’s special formulations were justified. Improvements in every aspect of fuels and combustion for transportation have obviated those reasons. These days the special gas most likely increases pollution. This because the additives reduce the energy content per gallon thus burning more per mile.
And never forget the MTBE (methyl tert-butyl ether) fiasco.
The truth is that EVERYTHING California has done for the last 40 years to reduce global warming has resulted in NOTHING.
That is the legacy of the one party democrat state.
62empirical
May 16, 2025 11:50 pm
I’m always surprised at how California continues to set new highs of blatant stupidity. Let’s drive all refiners out of the state to force people to buy EV’s that aren’t available. Oh, your EV caught fire? Call the battery operated Fire Engine! Wait, the electrical grid can’t handle the load? Maybe we should have some gas generators around just in case…shucks, we have no gas for them, remember? And we can’t buy them anyway, because we lost all that tax revenue when we forced people to stop buying….wait for it….gasoline!
Morons. Absolute morons.
Rational Keith
May 17, 2025 11:14 am
Noting OR and WA are high, I point to a shortage of refining capacity in Cascadia (OR, WA, BC).
Refineries in NW WA supply the Seattle and Portland OR areas and the lower mainland of BC. (They get much of their oil from a spur off the TransMountain Pipeline from Alberta, which those refineries were built to use. Later they received oil from Alaska’s North Slope but that has been declining.)
CA oilfields may be declining but there is oil in TX, and the expanded TMP is loading tankers in Burnaby BC – not going to the US because of Trump’s tariff game.
While Canada’s new government waffles on allowing building of more pipelines – I predict it will obstruct them. (The notreallyLiberal government of Canada obstructed a plan to build another pipeline to tidewater, across central BC to the Kitimat-Prince Rupert area of the west coast, so it was not built. A group of tribes wants to build a comparable pipeline to north of Prince Rupert. Of course pipelines take time to build.
Good news is that an LNG terminal in Kitimat is close to shipping gas from the Coastal Gas Link pipeline. That pipeline was obstructed by eco-activists exploiting ‘hereditary chiefs’ – using violence, whereas elected chiefs wanted the pipeline for its economic benefits. They care about their constituents, eco-activists do not.
High gasoline prices are not a bug, it’s a feature. The Green Blob wants to encourage conservation, so jacking up prices the peasants pay is a goal.
All they need are sturdy sandals while they wait around for mass transit.
High speed rail’s a comin.
The trains will be SO high speed, it will seem like you’re not even moving!
Maybe the should test that train in Spain during a blackout.
High prices are how the market signals shortages.
They cause consumers to cut back and producers to increase production. Resulting in the shortage going away.
Likewise, low prices are the signal of a surplus.
That’s in an open market. High prices can also be a signal of Government activity.
But the Democratic People’s Republic of California is mostly socialist, and lacks real price signals. “Regulated prices”are
unreal.
Whilst, ultimately, price is a function of the interaction between supply and demand, government interference is always guaranteed to f*$k things up!
Does anyone think requiring fuel to remain storage would limit supply and cause prices to go up even more?
I do not know the answer. Does Cal. have an inventory tax? If so, then yes.
Californians need to wake up your state leaders are screwing you over big time. You can not wait for them to fix the problem. They are the problem.
But the majority of California voters keep re-electing them. Partly because the captured media aren’t telling the whole story, partly because the voters don’t inform themselves, and partly because the California voters love the “free everything” Government. (Except for gasoline.)
Free everything? There must be another reason. I live here, have since I was 6, and my 10’s of thousands of dollars per year of state taxes gets me nothing but bad roads and more taxes. I’d move if I could, but I can’t (so you people who think I’d vote lib if I came to your state can save it.)
It’s free everything for those who don’t want to be responsible for themselves.
The majority of CA voters have probably “educated” in CA schools. Hence, they’re mostly ignorant on anything scientific or economic in nature.
left out a “been”
If we ever get a fair election, paper ballots and citizens only, California will be red.
What is the matter with the people in California? There was once a joke as to where the people of California came from. The joke goes that once a long time ago the country tilted and everything that was loose rolled and rattled into California. The people there seem to be suckers for every Progressive scam. State motto: We virtue signal.
California’s growth was the result of greater freedom. Now peple have been bailing out of California, many to Texas.
California is regulating itself out of business. Unfortunately the closer it gets to its’ nirvana the less likely it will have the tax base to support it.
When the government sets a legal “minimum” amount of anything, then that amount becomes the new zero.
Using made up numbers.
Lets say that prior to this bill, whenever supplies dropped below 1 million gallons, then prices would start rising as oil companies tried to make sure that supplies didn’t go down to zero.
Now the government says, in its infinite stupidity, that in order to keep prices low, we will mandate that oil company stocks can never drop below 1 million gallons, thus prices won’t rise.
The reality is, that since the stocks can’t drop below 1 million, as soon as actual stocks drop below 2 million gallons, prices start rising so that the company never drops below the new floor of 1 million gallons.
Add to that, the cost of maintaining 1 million gallons of gas, that you aren’t allowed to sell.
That’s the really dumb part, maintaining a reserve which can’t be sold. If the state ordered everyone to keep 5 gallons of milk in the fridge, everyone would have 5 gallons of putrid milk taking up space.
I swear these clowns can’t think past the end of their nose. Straight price controls look sane in comparison.
You just defined the new age minimum wage.
It’s like splitting a pizza. One that fell on the floor, and you have shovel the toppings back on as best you can, and you still have to pay – wait, what? $50 for pizza? Yikes.
As Gruesome as Newsome is there is worse much of Europe is $8/gallon plus
But California is (much) bigger than Germany, the 6th biggest country in Europe. Sweden is the 5th biggest country in Europe, and California is very nearly as large. Having lived in Southern California for 28 years, I can attest to the amount of driving the average person has to do. I put 37,000 miles a year on every car I owned, as did my wife: total 74,000 car-miles per year for a family of four. Today I live in Northern Virginia. I bought my last vehicle in 2021, and it just passed 43,400 miles. Over half of that was accumulated traveling to visit relatives in Tennessee, Indiana, Maryland and Missouri. Without that, I would have put only about 5,000 miles per year on that vehicle. California is just much bigger than most countries in Europe. Hell, I lived in San Bernardino County and that’s just a little smaller than Croatia! I doubt if any European country averages as many road miles per year as California.
I agree. I visited California many times on business.
An old quote.
Yeah Chu was a really out there
“Gavin Newsom Named U-Haul Salesperson Of The Year”
ROFLMAO. I love it.
What is there to complain? In The Netherlands we easily pay between $8.50 and $9 per gallon.
I’ll see your $9 a gallon for gas and raise with the average house cost in Los Angeles of $1 million USD. Just wait, California will surpass your cost of gas, if you can get it at all, in a few years. And be proud of it. One party states have no competition for stupidity.
Commifornia is almost exactly 10X the size of the Netherlands with little or no reliable mass transit!
Many workers there have to drive an hour or more to commute because they cannot afford to live anywhere close to their job due to highly inflated housing prices!
Generally it is a good idea to put the brain in gear first, before commenting; as I have found on occasion when suffering a sleep or caffeine deficiency. Good luck with the EU shutting down your farms, and pushing you into the Nut Zero, though. Maybe by 2044, the 100th anniversary of D-Day, we will be in a position to liberate you from the totalitarian regime rising in Brussels!
Why do you allow it?
So yall are even more foolish.
“What is there to complain?”
Are you happy paying “between $8.50 and $9 per gallon”? Wouldn’t you like the opportunity to pay less? Ok then, thanks for making our point for us.
I just keep waiting for CA to go belly up. The shift to EVs, assuming they don’t suddenly have an awakening to the stupidity, will surely doom their power grid. Their ever-increasing minimum wage won’t help when businesses can’t afford to employ people. It’s a truly sad state.
San Andreas could solve all the problems.
California is just one 8.5 earthquake away from bankruptcy. It’s not a question of if. It’s a question of when.
The ‘local’ taxes must be a state average. I know of one bay area bridge where the gas is $.50 more on one side than the other.
California also has the 4th or 5th largest petroleum reserves in the US. However, to signal our “green virtue”, we continue to shut down the oil wells. In the 1980s, we produced 95% of our petroleum needs in the state. Today, despite lower demands, we import up to 65% of our crude oil needs from South America, Africa & the Middle East. These are from countries with much lower environmental standards than California. On top of that, the emissions of those oil tankers coming to California…
Despite all appearances, this “green virtue signaling” of Gavin Newsom, the Dems and a bunch of alphabet agencies keeps our oil and energy prices through the roof affecting the poor, minorities, women and children and the marginalized the most, the very same people that seem to keep voting these defuses back into office year after year.
The real crisis in California isn’t about climate change but about energy poverty and Sacramento is doing its part to keep that crisis going passing the blame and laughing all the way to the bank with our money.
It’s time to send mirrors to Gavin Newsom and his cronies so that they can finally see the real reason we’re all being impacted by their ignorant policies, laws, taxes, fees and plundering of the people of California.
When you actually learn that the Brown family holds exclusive rights for the import of Indonesian oil (and has since the 1960’s) and that the Getty family(Newsom’s adoptive parents) holds exclusive rights to the import of Ecuadorian oil, the largest importer, it becomes clear why California won’t allow pumping or other imports of oil from other states.
32 years of Brown and Newsom governors is a long time to enrich themselves.
California is the example of a state progressing anti free market policies. The alternative to a free market, is a controlled or command market, usually/traditionally called communism.
Make no mistake, what we are seeing across the Western World and well evidenced by California is Gramsci’s communist ‘Long March Through the Institutions’. When people ask why do government keep doing these crazy things, it is worth noting who does not complain. The media do not complain they are already captured by the long marchers. The academics do not complain, they are another institution captured by Gramsci’s generations long policy. The recipients of hand outs from the state are not complaining, they hang in there while the free loading lasts. The ones who are complaining are the tax payers and they are leaving helped by U-Haul to a better place, a fairer place where reward for effort is still seen as a positive.
When the street clutter and deprivation of drug addled society becomes untenable, then the free loaders will also leave or they will simply fade away dying out in their rotten squalor. A squalor enabled by unfair taxation and socialist ideology gone wrong as it always does…
Someone with the ability to communicate with Newsom and his ilk need to get through to them, the experiment has been run and the result is, it does not work.
It has to be a free market or there is no market.
Without a market i.e. buying and selling to meet the needs/desires of society there is simply managed decline..it is that simple.
As Churchill remarked when asked about capitalism. He said, capitalism is terrible, but it is better than other options. “The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings. The inherent virtue of Socialism is the equal sharing of miseries.” Winston Churchill .
Go long on U-Haul.
The high prices for electicity are tragic (criminal?) in the Mid-Atlantic.
PJM grid area had massive coal production in West Central Pennsylvania with large (40%) industrial base in Pa Electric area. Industies’ large demand and energy usage kept prices as low as $.02/kWhr through the 1980’s. Now we pay $.16-.20+) and more coming.
Separating utilities from generation and transmission (thanks Jimmy and FERC), along with massive industry collapse (inflation, recession, regulations) destroyed the industrial base and 100 thousand livlihoods , and leaving the residential customers with higher bills for the distribution system and costs formerly allocated to and borne by industrial customers. The distribution system is the highest cost per kWhr for capital and maintenance expenses. And now utiities are asking for 19% increases–costs have no where else to go but homeowners and businesses and hospitals and schools….
Rapidly rising costs have been caused by the “green” scam and a series of complacent governors and legislators. Texas and Europe have finally realized wind and solar leach off the exisiting reliable capacity and reduce stability, reliability and availability of the grid–threatening life and livlihoods with blackouts.
Now, the coal plants are being destroyed, the nuclear plants have been mostly shut down, while the entire area is sitting on massive gas and coal supplies.
Where to from here?
More poor. Less productive jobs. Hardships for all.
A wasteland of failed policies.
California “may” not be populated by idiots. It might just be political mass psychosis instead. At any rate and notwithstanding a dear friend who lives in Bakersfield and can’t understand why he pays so much for gasoline being near oil fields and refineries, y’all deserve what you get.
There was a time when California’s special formulations were justified. Improvements in every aspect of fuels and combustion for transportation have obviated those reasons. These days the special gas most likely increases pollution. This because the additives reduce the energy content per gallon thus burning more per mile.
And never forget the MTBE (methyl tert-butyl ether) fiasco.
The truth is that EVERYTHING California has done for the last 40 years to reduce global warming has resulted in NOTHING.
That is the legacy of the one party democrat state.
I’m always surprised at how California continues to set new highs of blatant stupidity. Let’s drive all refiners out of the state to force people to buy EV’s that aren’t available. Oh, your EV caught fire? Call the battery operated Fire Engine! Wait, the electrical grid can’t handle the load? Maybe we should have some gas generators around just in case…shucks, we have no gas for them, remember? And we can’t buy them anyway, because we lost all that tax revenue when we forced people to stop buying….wait for it….gasoline!
Morons. Absolute morons.
Noting OR and WA are high, I point to a shortage of refining capacity in Cascadia (OR, WA, BC).
Refineries in NW WA supply the Seattle and Portland OR areas and the lower mainland of BC. (They get much of their oil from a spur off the TransMountain Pipeline from Alberta, which those refineries were built to use. Later they received oil from Alaska’s North Slope but that has been declining.)
CA oilfields may be declining but there is oil in TX, and the expanded TMP is loading tankers in Burnaby BC – not going to the US because of Trump’s tariff game.
While Canada’s new government waffles on allowing building of more pipelines – I predict it will obstruct them. (The notreallyLiberal government of Canada obstructed a plan to build another pipeline to tidewater, across central BC to the Kitimat-Prince Rupert area of the west coast, so it was not built. A group of tribes wants to build a comparable pipeline to north of Prince Rupert. Of course pipelines take time to build.
Good news is that an LNG terminal in Kitimat is close to shipping gas from the Coastal Gas Link pipeline.
That pipeline was obstructed by eco-activists exploiting ‘hereditary chiefs’ – using violence, whereas elected chiefs wanted the pipeline for its economic benefits. They care about their constituents, eco-activists do not.