The supply chain for transportation fuels and many everyday products depend on refinery manufacturers that refine crude oil.
Co-authored by Ronald Stein and Mike Ariza
Published June 1, 2026, at America Out Loud NEWS
An energy “REALITY” reminder is that crude oil by itself is useless black tar, unless you build a multi-billion-dollar refinery to break it down to produce various types of transportation fuels, and oil derivatives that are the basis of the products in our materialistic world.
Without refineries to manufacture that useless black tar that we call crude oil, into usable transportation fuels and oil derivatives that are the basis of more than 6,000 products in our daily lives, we’re back to the 1800’s.
Why are the California “users” of the products and transportation fuels made from crude oil,
and the politicians who hate the guts of in-state refineries, want to drive them out of business?
- Since 2023 California Crude Oil Refining Capacity has dropped by 35%.
- Crude oil production capacity in California is in terminal decline, resulting in the State importing from foreign countries more than 60% of the crude oil demands of in-State refineries.
- Even now, given the amount of transportation fuels that California is importing from foreign countries, the State continues its vulnerability level of being a National Security Risk to America.
Refineries are the supply chain source of those products and transportation fuels made from crude oil that has allowed the world to sustain 10 times more people today (8.3 billion) than at the start of the Industrial Revolution of approximately 700 to 800 million people in 1750.
There’s something wrong with this picture to rid the world of the suppliers of the products demanded by the economy as the products from refined crude oil, in addition to supporting more than 8 billion people on this planet, have helped hospitals, doctors, and medications, to extend life longevity from 40 to 75+ during those few centuries since 1750.
California in-state refining capacity for transportation fuels continue to diminish:
- Two refineries have converted over to manufacturing renewable diesel. In these cases,
350,000 barrels of crude oil processing per day has dropped offline. They no longer
produce gasoline or jet fuel of any volume. - Within the last seven months California policies have driven two other refineries, Phillips
66 in Wilmington and Valero in Benicia to shut down operations and leave the State.
The closure of 2 refineries in California have increased total transportation fuels of gasoline, jet fuel, and diesel needing to be imported from Asian refineries. This has made California vulnerable to many scenarios which could quickly generate supply shocks or shortages for the entire USA. Some of these scenarios include Port problems, weather issues, unscheduled refinery downtimes, or a significant global event.
- In the case of the Iranian war that vulnerability has never been so clear.
- Due to the closure of the strait of Hormuz crude oil supplies to Asian refineries have dropped off dramatically.
- Asian refineries have been forced to cut back their crude oil charge rates. This forced them as of late March to suspend shipments of gasoline, jet fuel, and diesel that they have been supplying California.
California’s policies are forcing the hands of Chevron, PBF, and Marathon, the three remaining oil corporations in California. Together they own six of the remaining seven operational refineries in the state. Between February 26th of 2026 and March 9th these companies did something unprecedented by dispatching three letters to the Governor and the state air board. While they have some varied details they are all very specific on two points:
- The air board has brand new cap and invest amendments that they will be voting on at the end of May.
- These amendments, if adopted, will result in huge fee increases for all three corporations. If the state will not sit down and negotiate with these corporations on these newly proposed amendments, then they will all look at shutting down their refineries and leaving the state.
If this happens then the famine will not be knocking on the door, it will be kicking it in. Cities have three to five days supply of food on hand. Even now, we are at a vulnerability level in which this is possible.
Here are two questions for the California “users” of the products made from processed crude oil:
- Are the “users” blaming refineries for humans living longer and healthier lives because of the medical industry that did not exist a few centuries ago?
- Are the “users” blaming refineries for virtually eliminating weather-related fatalities that requires a combination of advanced prediction techniques, proactive infrastructure planning, and community preparedness?
The world is not dependent on natural fossil fuels, as no one uses “raw” crude oil that is only black tar, BUT has become dependent on the products and transportation fuels MADE FROM oil, the same products and transportation fuels that Wind and Solar CANNOT make!
Today, we’re a materialistic society. Wind turbines and solar panels ONLY generate electricity but CANNOT make any of the products or transportation fuels that get made from fossil fuels that support:
- Hospitals
- Airports
- Militaries
- Medical equipment
- Telecommunications
- Communications systems
- Space programs
- Appliances
- Electronics
- Sanitation systems
- Heating and ventilating
- Transportation – vehicles, rail, ocean, and air
- Construction – roads and buildings
- Nearly Half the World’s Population Relies on Synthetic Fertilizers Made from Fossil Fuels
Discussing crude oil alone, too often consultants, educators, politicians, and also many industrial leaders CANNOT explain how the more than 350,000 wind turbines, and an estimated 3.5 to 5 billion individual solar panels in the world will make the following transportation fuels:
- Bunker fuel, to support over 112,500 commercial and merchant ships globally.
- Jet fuel to support an estimated 30,000 commercial aircraft in the world.
- Gasoline fuel: Worldwide gasoline consumption hovers around 300 billion gallons annually.
- Diesel fuel: Global diesel usage is approaching 400 billion gallons annually.
Transportation fuel demands continue to grow to support jet fuel for planes, bunker fuel for ships, diesel fuel for trucks, and gasoline fuel for cars.
Energy-dense fuels like coal, oil, and natural gas – demonized as sources of carbon dioxide – remain the backbone of food distribution, especially in the developed world. They fuel irrigation pumps, fertilizer plants, delivery fleets, farm machinery and refrigeration. Remove these energy inputs, and granaries would shrink. Famine would no longer be a relic of history; it would be knocking at the door.
With California being the 4th largest economy in the world, the two refinery shut downs resulted in an additional loss of nearly 300,000 barrels per day of state crude oil refining capacity. If the six remaining refineries in the State go down, the ports of Los Angeles, Long Beach, and Oakland will go down. Logistics will collapse. The supply chain of the products and transportation fuels MADE from oil will grind to a halt. Within a few short weeks, cities will be out of food. This will have a cascading effect in Nevada and Arizona. If three of the busiest ports in America are in fact shut down, it is quite possible that food shortages could reach deep into America. California continues to be the supply chain source of the products and transportation fuels demanded by citizens of the State, and others in America that depend on that supply chain.
Ronald Stein, P.E., is an engineer, columnist on energy literacy at America Out Loud NEWS, and advisor on energy literacy for the Heartland Institute and CFACT, and co-author of the Pulitzer Prize-nominated book “Clean Energy Exploitations.” He is also the recipient of an unsolicited Tribute to Ronald Stein from Stephen Heins.
Mike Ariza is a US Navy veteran with over twenty years of experience in the refining industry. His refining experience extends from the Chevron Refinery in Richmond California, the Flying J refinery in Bakersfield, and the Valero Refinery in Benicia. Mike held the positions of number one control board Operator at Flying J and Senior Refinery Control Board Supervisor at Valero. He was an instructor of both operator field and control board classes. Among his peers he is often referred to as one of the top ten control board operators in the country.
Please share this information with teachers, students, and friends to encourage Energy Literacy conversations at the family dinner table.
Watts Up With That five years ago:
Friday Funny: Greta Thunberg’s perfect petroleum-free world
Pretty much the same as her brain-cells free world, hey?
Looks like she lives rent-free in you head.
You didn’t get the memo?
Greta got too old for the UN and has moved on from climate protest to campaigning “from the river to the sea“.
For a time she was rent free in Israel before being bundled onto an aeroplane and deported.
She took a break from Palestine to support the oppressive, Communist regime of Cuba. If there’s a left-wing cause out there, she’ll shill for it
One thing that has never lived in your head, rent free or not.
Reality.
no room left.
Trump lives rent free in all spaces in Mur’s pointy head.
He’s funny. Guess an american suffering from his stupid policies may think differently.
Trump is the president he said Biden was and Harris would be | Opinion
https://eu.usatoday.com/story/opinion/columnist/2026/06/03/trump-doj-fund-is-government-weaponization/90356451007/
Imagine that, socialists accusing others of doing what the socialists have been doing for decades.
You have to remember the way a socialist mind works, true or false is determined solely by whether it supports what the party tells it to believe.
Didn’t know Magats are socialists.
A Socialist’s mind does not work.
A Socialist pretends to work and the government pretends to pay him.
“Guess an american suffering from his stupid policies may think differently.”
Guessing is all you can manage because the ability to reason isn’t there. The only Americans suffering are left wing idiots who can’t give up their ideological disconnects from how things work in the real world. Trump has deconstructed the institutional indoctrination that brainwashed people without critical thinking skills into believing nonsense. The only reason they suffer is they refuse to learn and evolve beyond the simple minded sense of self they allowed political ideology to define themselves with. You have to have the ability to think to think differently.
Thanks for not deleting/banning MyUsernameReloaded – consistent with free speach ethics.
Agreed, we all need a comical viewpoint expressed to break up our more serious posts. MUNR is like a Griff-upgrade, but still can’t shake the under-the-bridge dust, dirt, and grime of the troll. Can’t wait to read its next taunt-like rant. Easy to troll Americans from mummy’s basement Down Unda or wherever it has chosen to exist, probably through the largess of its government like a good lefty.
A lot of good comedy does. It’s the gift that keeps on giving!
No critique on what trump is doing currently? Read the news recently? And do I have some news for you about food supply and climate change.
For oil:
Research in oil-free plastic alternatives continues. (The evil R word, as we know everything was already known in the golden 50s)
Most is burned for road transport – we can electrify this.
40% of bulk shipping is for fossil fuels – guess what happens when nations continue with their electrification and build more renewables.
And as for rails (You won’t believe this kind of magic):
road transport – we can electrify this
Not in the UK we can’t.
What’s so special about the UK?
It created the United States and the industrialised (enlightened) world.
Think, if you had been born in a former Spanish American colony you’d probably be trying to get over the Rio Grande.
There’s nothing special about the UK in that sense.
Electrifying transportation has been a fail everywhere it has been mandated.
Except the biggest car market is currently electrifying..
Not in the UK it isn’t.
Presumably, this is another party political promo for China.
And losing lots of money doing so.
I notice you still believe that government mandates count as market forces.
China uses mostly HYDRO and COAL fired electricity. !
Also, there are rules that essentially stop everyone except the rich and powerful from buying ICE vehicles.
Do you believe they will succeed?
ie, Do you believe that in 2050 will the Chinese auto market be primarily EV?
Almost all new sales in all car markets will be EVs by 2050. Same for trucks, farming, construction and mining equipment.
Ships? I guess in the double digits, but that’s hard to say. For aircraft we will see quite a few hybrid models for short range.
The manufacturing of EVs, batteries, wind turbines, and solar panels ALL require the use of COAL, OIL AND GAS.
If you think worse-than-useless wind and solar power and EVs are changing anything about the energy that modern civilization is ULTIMATELY dependent on, you are delusional.
Why don’t you show the math about how many Tesla batteries would be needed to power a 600 hp tractor running 18 hours a day. Show us the time it would take to continually run back to a changing station supplied by how many semi-trucks with batteries. Then show us how many charging stations would be needed to charge all those batteries so they’ll be ready to start work the following day. Talk about a data center needing a lot of power!
I have answered several of you posts. When are you going to give your answer to my questions?
Only if the government mandates the loss of personal choice.
That is of course, the long term goal.
farming?
You clearly do not know any farmers.
Who cares what the data show, LooserName has faith in the party to go on.
They don’t have mostly HYDRO like Austria does for a start.
Apart from the HYDRO powered train network, Austria uses mostly GAS, OIL and a bit of COAL
OBB have their own grid and power stations.
https://infrastruktur.oebb.at/en/company/environment-climate-protection
Yes, HYDRO..
There is absolutely ZERO possibility that intermittent and erratic wind and solar can support a modern train network.
Also Wind and solar are, over their life time, the most environmentally destructive form of electricity ever devised.
They are neither clean or sustainable.
If you don’t know, how can you possibly recommend appropriate actions?
Not in the US either unless we can greatly expand the generation and transmission capacity of the grid and that isn’t happening at anywhere near the level needed.
Renewables won’t do the job as they are not reliable and barely dispatchable.
If we are going to electrify road transport we need nuclear and a lot of it, particularly if we want to get recharge times down to a reasonable level.
I’ve said this before but I’ll say it again. Electric cars won’t be viable in the US until they can draw power from the roads they drive on.
Good luck implementing THAT, especially when they can’t even build enough charging stations and grid enhancements to back them up.
Charging strips under the road may be sufficient to add a few percent to your range, but there is no way they will ever be able to actually power the cars driving on them.
The voices in your head are getting louder.
We can electrify just about anything if we have to.
The problem is that it is inefficient, costly and doesn’t work for the vast majority of the people.
Then again if your real goal is to make it easier for the government to control the masses, this is the perfect solution.
Contrariwise electrification is highly efficient. So much government control charging your vehicle from your own solar panels…
How do you charge your EV from the 14th floor of a tower block? Do you run an extension cable out of the window down to the ground and then to the vehicle?
Same as with an ICE car. And living on the 14th floor and not having proper public transport is awful anyways.
Public transport is always awful anyways.
BTW, I notice that you, as usual, completely avoided answering the question that was asked.
No, I told you in that case you are on an even playingfield with ICEs: Public charging (e.g. the equivalent to gas stations).
Sorry you never experienced proper public transport.
Basically NO-ONE ever has. !!
You are limited to a short distance from where-ever the public transport is..
… and if you want to take a load of anything anywhere.. forget it. !.
There’s a reason why worldwide, as soon as any option to public transportation is available, the vast majority of people switch to it.
And of course you are going to tax everyone to build these mythical charging stations.
MUR, you do love to make assumptions based on no facts in evidence. This American has lived, worked and traveled outside the US. I have used public transit in many US cities, as well as London, Paris, Cologne, Munich and Tokyo. Please let us know which of those cities have “proper” public transit. I saw minimally acceptable public transit in the city cores, but not much good once you move away from the center.
Living on the 14th floor, you can still use an ICE vehicle because you can fill it up in less than 5 minutes basically anywhere.
Living on the 14th floor, you have absolutely nowhere where you can “fill-up” an EV at all… most places with any common sense to do not provide ev charging in underground garages.
Your delusions have gotten the better of you.
First off, even a large house, much less an average one does not have enough roof space to hold enough solar panels to charge a car. Even if the roof was optimally oriented, which few are. Even covering your entire lot won’t be enough.
As for those who live in apartments, I guess they just have to walk.
Wind and solar are both very expensive and rarely available.
Might want to mention the car is used during the day and recharged overnight.
That looks like a DIESEL / electric locomotive.
It’s a 1016 fully electric. The diesel-electric would be a 2016.
Electric trains have exhaust?
Where do you see an exhaust?
The top, near the non-connected end.
Also there are no overhead power cables or anyway for the train to connect to them if there were.
Unless you are stupid enough to believe the train is using batteries.
I made you circles:
Red: overhead wire
Green: extended pantograph
White: train type.
MUR is correct on all three counts.
Austria run a mix of Electric (overhead catenary) and Diesel Electric.
Their two main locos are the the “Taurus” 1016 Class electric, and the “Hector” 2016 Class diesel electric. Both are build by Siemens and are the same era/age..
They also run electricity powered suburban electric trains and Hi-speed trains between major centres, including to cities outside Austria as part of the EU network.
Tell us the range of that engine pulling 70 loaded grain cars. Here in the U.S., that engine would need a 150 mile range pulling that load at 50 mph and would require an engine of 5000 hp. Can that engine supply that?
Go and compare the data sheets – they are available online. Tell me what you found out, because in my opinion your question is on the one hand to broad and on the other hand containing things that don’t really make sense when talking about trains.
Asking for the range and power of a locomotive you yourself recommended? That is not overbroad. Your wanting me to do your research that you should have done before posting is your fault. Don’t act like an expert if you can’t handle simple questions.
You are the one that made a generalization, not me. The part of my question outlining requirements is from watching trains go by my house every day hauling grain and other cargo. It is factual. The horsepower required I did google, if you think it incorrect, quote your own figure. It is one that is needed to determine the kilowatt hours needed.
I did look up this engine. It would be very equivalent to a 6000 hp diesel engine. Here is the rub, it is powered by overhead electric lines. It is not self-powered.
Overhead lines in Austria may not be a problem mileage wise, but a tremendous issue here along with sidings to allow passing trains to use the same track. Maybe you are familiar with the distances needed in the U.S. as compared to Austria. From the northeast to the southwest is thousands of miles of overhead electric lines. It won’t happen here. California can’t even get 150 miles of high speed train track laid.
It’s not a distance problem. Europe, China and India have electrifite a huge part of their network. It’s more the unwillingness of operators to spend money upfront for cheaper operation later and a difference in rolling stock height that has developed because the whole system they operate on has no catenary system.
Funny how the problem with getting socialism to work, always works out to be other people not willing to spend enough of their own money.
Assuming it is true about China, I’m sure they have only electrified short runs between major cities. That is already known to be true about Europe.
Here in the US, we have done the same with the Northeast corridor. Nowhere else does it make sense.
Let me google that for you:
Electrified Rail
China 120,000 out of 162,000 km
EU 115,000 out of 200,000 km
India 69,000 out of 70,000 km
USA 3,300 out of 220,000 km
China and India rail are powered mostly by COAL and a bit of HYDRO in China
EU mostly by NUCLEAR and HYDRO
USA is fortunate in that it has plentiful supplies of OIL to make diesel fuel, and doesn’t need to go to the cost of electrification.
Google says China has about 70,000 miles of freight track. The US has about double that at 140,000 miles, none of which is electrified. I sincerely doubt you’ll see the investment capital appear to put in overhead electric lines any time soon.
Your range question doesn’t make sense. Electric trains get their power from a catenary system.
The Train in this picture has 6.4 MW – So around 8000 HP.
Your original question seems to imply “can I replace the train in the US with this train” – and the answer is probably no, but neither can the train you see replace the one in the picture. To answer that question you need to look at the data sheet of your example train. I don’t know which one that is from your post. (Beside differences in infrastructure and operation.)
The train by your house is also operated by an electric motor, the only difference is where the electricity comes from. So gaining their traktion from an electric motor is not a defining characteristic here anyways.
Funny how you don’t bring this point up until after Jim has already pointed it out, and after you were the one who demanded that Jim look it up for you.
Jim didn’t have to look it up. Jim is an amateur ferroequinoligist. (You can look that up.)
Actually I I still have the Lionel train set I got when I was 9 yo.
Sure it can. It is self-contained. If the track spacing was correct, it could move under its own power on any railway.
Which of course, is the beauty of using diesel electric…
….you don’t need to have the huge cost of overhead wires.
I have addressed the range issue above. As to power, many electric locomotives in the states have been capable of over 4,000 horsepower steady state and much more for short-term overloads. You can check out the Pennsylvania Railroad’s GG-1 (now retired).
Thinking what sort of electricity supply would be needed down here in Australia to pull some of our huge freight trains over very long distances.
These train often have two, three or more very powerful DIESEL ELECTRIC locos on them.
ps.. Not to mention the iron ore and coal trains which are absolutely HUGE !
Basically, absent maintenance and servicing, electric locomotives powered either from overhead wires or third rail, can go forever. That technology has been available for over 100 years, even here in the US. Go take a ride on the Northeast Corridor from Boston to Washington.
So, now you try to flip the script from California to President Trump.
Not worth the powder replying to your idiocies.
The Austrian rail network is run from a grid that is mainly HYDRO powered.
Austria’s energy supply is mostly from the reliable COAL, OIL, GAS, and HYDRO
ps OBB is Austrian rail.
OBB have their own grid and power stations.
https://infrastruktur.oebb.at/en/company/environment-climate-protection
———
And there I thought it’s kangaroo powered 😀
Tell us.. how do the trains operate when there is no wind at night !
Wind and solar cannot possibly supply the electricity requirements for a modern train network.
In this case, apparently (I’m not an Aussie) they can only make that claim thanks to HYDROELECTRIC power, certainly they can’t run a railroad on breezes and sunshine.
OBB is Austria, not Australia.. 🙂
In Australia, only the metropolitan passenger areas and a couple of the shorter intercity rail lines are electrified. (from COAL and GAS electricity)
Basically all freight is big diesel electric engines.
ps.. Passenger services outside the metropolitan areas, and long distance passenger service are almost exclusively diesel-electric.
The XPT is the current long distance passenger train, modelled on the UK Intercity HST 125… but I have heard they are updating them soon.
Or maybe
OBB Hercules Austria’s Powerful Diesel Electric Locomotive #railway #train #austria #obb #fyp
Diesel-Electric classes currently running on OBB include:
Class 2016 Hercules, Class 2043, Class 2143 and Class 2070 shunter
Class 2016 diesel electric locos are used extensively on regional lines
Austria: OBB Class 2016 diesel locos on regional passenger trains on the Graz Hbf to Fehring line
A better video of the Class 2016 DIESEL ELECTRIC which sees WIDESPREAD USE across Austria.
ÖBB Class 2016 “Hercules” Austria’s Most Versatile Diesel Locomotive #austria #locomotive #fyp #obb
You say WE can do a lot of things, but you never mention the costs, especially the human cost of doing them. Wild inflation, lost jobs, increased poverty are just some of the results. Do they ever enter into your assessments? Tell what you consider as costs WE should bear.
When you are trying to perfect socialism, the amount of money other people have to spend is not relevant.
What you are describing is just another oil / fossil fuel related shock that happens every few years.
As opposed to the total NON-SUPPLY from wind and solar every windless night, and minimal erratic supply at other times.
Your lack of understanding is amazing.
And totally un-affected by reality.
Note that the electrified railroads extolled by MUR are all in countries where the railroad infrastructure, or the railroads in their entirety, are owned by the State, with the taxman coming up with the capital and operating costs. The major electrified line in the US (Northeast Corridor, Philadelphia to Harrisburg, and major metropolitan commuter lines) are State-owned and operated, with the taxman providing the necessary subsidies. Smells remarkably like socialism. The profitable long-haul railroads are privately owned and operated. It’s called capitalism.
An additional difference I have observed while traveling outside the US are that the trains are short (compared to ours) and the train cars are small (compared to ours) making for much lighter trains. Additionally, as noted above, our trains travel long distances.
Paradise isn’t Paradise any more…when you have to expensively import it…
Paradise is still paradise as long as they are allowed to import the stuff they fight so much against.
Once they can no longer cover up the consequences with other peoples productsand have to go full communist utopia, then it’ll become paradise lost.
As soon as this happens you’ll see Hollywood and all of the liberal upper class move out of California(and to some other drowning Beachfront property) faster than they can say Net Zero
An energy “REALITY” reminder is… wasted in the UK
Energy specialists say abandoning net zero and increasing oil and gas drilling would cause more instability for Britons
Specialists?
James Sutton, a co-executive director of the Zero Hour campaign – Zero Hour campaigns for the action the science demands to avert climate and nature breakdown. We are dedicated to locking the science into law…
Jess Ralston, the head of energy at the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit thinktank – Yes, a renewables cheerleader
Tessa Khan, the director of Uplift, which researches and campaigns on the North Sea, said: “The idea that the North Sea can be an engine for economic growth, that it would be able to help the underlying structural challenges of the UK economy, is for the birds.”
They will never get it.
Abandoning oil, which is always available and sometimes expensive for wind/solar which sometimes available and always expensive, is a solution that doesn’t work, for a problem that never existed.
AS usual a qualitative analysts worthy of a climate alarmist
> Foret products made of oil that are not burned for energy. They represent the most trivil and easily replaced. Carbon feedstock for chemistry is no problem. Energy is,
Don’t be a dumbass and conflate the two
I think it was Lincoln who said something along the lines of keeping quite, so as to not appear a fool, or speaking and confirming it.
As someone once said:
You can ignore reality, you can’t ignore the consequences of ignoring reality.
The Labour party does.
What they do is force someone else to bear the consequences of their ignoring reality.
As Thomas Sowell so eloquently puts it, (paraphrasing) the problem with the self-anointed “elites” is that they suffer no consequences for being wrong/their stupid ideas/their idiotic policies.
“you can’t ignore the consequences of ignoring reality.”
Ignoring the consequences of their policies is what Liberals do best. They have no idea how reality is constructed and don’t believe in personal responsibility or even consequences for that matter. They have no understanding of how cause and effect works because having the correct beliefs to be included in the good tribe replaced the ability to reason.
California has always been a target for the Marxists. The plan is to bankrupt it, fill it with compliant invaders to bolster the population and Congressional seats, produce maximum chaos by allowing crime to fester, pay homage to every minority to maintain a one party state, increase welfare to bait the indigent, and eventually “rescue” it by turning it into a Socialist/Marxist state (is there a difference?) when everything collapses. Despite the great weather and scenery smart and wealthy people are leaving in droves, making the takeover goal easier.
And, like a cell in the body taken over by an invading virus, once the virus has multiplied by the millions inside the cell, it bursts open, flooding the nearby cells (i.e., states) with the millions of replicated virus particles to continue the infection…
Of course California can continue to ignore reality, it’s a one party state; and, just like in the Soviet Union, the party is always right.
CARB said roll over and play dead, and they all rolled over before realizing where this was going next in their agenda schedule.
First they play dead, then they are dead.
Don’t forget the SCAQMD.
I have to wonder if the dual-walled fuel tank mandate in California was designed to force the closure of 500+ gas stations in the Pyrite State? Permits needed to make the changeover took a long time to obtain and the costs of removing old single-walled tanks and installing new double-walled tanks exceeded $1 million, assuming one could obtain the needed permit(s) to do so. The timeline for doing this was quite short so it seems to me that is what the mandate was designed to do – close gas stations, period.
Can California Keep Ignoring Reality?
As long as Hollywood keeps cranking out bad movies, yeah.
No change for the foreseeable future there, then.
But they aren’t being made in Hollywood anymore – fugitive productions. LA County, and to some extent, the state, are beginning to wake up. But instead of seeking a rational solution, they just look for special treatment.
We can expect an early symptom this month. Airlines are already reconfiguring routes away from California airports, particularly Sacramento. Jet fuel reserves are at multiyear lows with little hope for sufficient supply.
The left has always wanted to eliminate air travel for the masses.
I’m sure there will be enough jet fuel to power their private jets.
Mobility has always been a target for the collectivists. Freedom of travel is so fundamental the Constitution doesn’t address it directly. A semiquincentennial of law has supported this. Indeed any rulings have been narrow and conscriptive on limitations. Like “privacy” these unenumerated basic human rights have been under attack tangentially. The top fractional percent are becoming annoyed by the unwashed masses laying claim to things formerly accessible to only the few.
I have my beer and popcorn at read and await the torches and pitcchforks.
California’s obsession with environmental affairs is one of the main reasons for its slowly declining population, most of whom have been heading to adjacent states. In those, the chief concern is living costs which are lower than in California. As well, there is less of a problem with crime, homelessness and poverty levels plus do-good types of governments at all levels which tend to attract more suspicion from voters than do anything better than states with more realistic attitudes toward their constituents.
The problem is, when the environmental issues that were real were addressed and corrected, the bureaucracy needed something else or else the bureaucracy would cease to exist.
The issue is clear and simple, California has every right to screw its own but it doesn’t have the right to screw the rest of us. The time has come for the federal government to insure our defense infrastructure has all the fuel and supplies it needs. Invite the remaining refineries to come to work for the rest of us. They can put in bids to process crude oil to federal standards with the military given first crack at the refined products. Since we will need crude bids can be submitted to reopen existing wells and develop new wells to federal standards. I would suggest that California open its eyes because in my view the docks are next.
”
Facility Count: The number of operable plants has steadily consolidated from over 250 in the 1980s down to the current ~131 operable facilities.Total
Capacity: Despite fewer individual locations, total U.S. crude distillation capacity remains at near-record highs as major integrated firms prioritize expanding highly productive, large-scale hubs.
Regional Hubs: Over half of the nation’s total refining capacity is clustered along the Gulf Coast (PADD 3), with Texas and Louisiana housing the largest facilitie
”
Plus
”
Twenty states in the U.S. do not have any operating crude oil refineries, with refining activity primarily concentrated in the Gulf Coast and Midwest.
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Presumably if we know these things then they too must know them yet they persist with these policies. Is their indifference a product of thinking something else will replace the oil and if so what? Or are they simply running on hopium perhaps believing they will have shuffled off this mortal coil before the problem hits.
It is all magical thinking among the Uniparty here in California. And as more and more folks notice the dysfunction, they continue to vote for the Uniparty. As Gene Wilder said in Blazing Saddles, “morons”.