Kerry JacksonEditor’s note: This has been excerpted with permission from the Pacific Research Institute. To read the entire report, click here.
It might be smart for oil and gas industry executives to start planning to pack up for a complete pullout from California. Or to at least notify government officials that their exit is being seriously contemplated. It’s not easy to operate a business that has been declared unofficially, but effectively, an enemy of the state.
The vilification began before Gavin Newsom became governor, but it’s been noted that under his “leadership,” the state has become determined to leave its bounty of crude in the ground.
“California would be the biggest oil producer in the world and the first U.S. state to plan a managed decline for the sector,” Climate News Now reported in 2021. At that time, it was producing 394 million barrels a day, “making it the seventh biggest U.S. state oil producer,” and the 27th biggest oil producer in the world if it were its own country.
To this end, lawmakers in Sacramento have introduced legislation, the Polluters Pay Climate Superfund Act, Senate Bill 684. It would set up a climate superfund program that would “require fossil fuel polluters to pay their fair share of the damage caused by greenhouse gases released into the atmosphere” between the 1990 and 2024 calendar years.
“Fair share” is an impossible benchmark to establish, as it is utterly subjective, and there’s no evidence, only speculation, that greenhouse gas emissions had damaged anything. These disputes need to be discussed in the open, but they have instead been weaponized for a state that is bent on wiping out an industry that was not only crucial to its booming growth, but also plays a consequential role in its present and is a necessary cornerstone of its future.
Maybe SB 684 is a multipurpose measure. One, it allows lawmakers to bleed the oil industry of its financial resources. California legislators have long regarded businesses as never-ending fonts of dollars to pay for their unbridled spending.
Two, it’s an unwelcome mat for the oil industry, another piece of the “managed decline.”
To continue reading, click here.
I appreciate you sharing this blog post. Thanks Again. Cool.
I have a relative that works for an oil company. For many, many months they tried to do business in California, but there were endless, increasing roadblocks and regulations, whether directly from the state, or from its proxy, the unions. Finally, after flushing millions of dollars down the toilet, the company gave up.
Closing local refineries will effect the states near California, too. The loss of that volume of fuel will cause distributors to look for close fuel sources and probably cause fuel prices to go up in neighboring states.
California politicians are ignoring the obvious need for fuels. If it only hurt Californians I wouldn’t care. They voted for it.
I would expand that opinion to virtually ALL industries in CA. The film and entertainment industry can stay. They and CA deserve each other.
I wish Governor News Scam and his fellow/Democrat/Globalists would get stranded in the Amazon