I & I Editorial BoardCalifornia has the trendiest, and most foolish, energy policies in the U.S. The result is a return to the early ’70s, when drivers lined up around the block, hoping and praying the gasoline wouldn’t run out before they got to the pumps.
“California’s oil industry now sits at the precipice of complete collapse,” says Edward Ring, director of water and energy policy at the California Policy Center, “and if that happens, more imports will not prevent lines at the pumps.”
How could California, which has the sixth most proved crude reserves in the country, be looking over the edge of a gasoline crisis?
California is hurtling toward the gas panic of ’25 because it has been at war with fossil fuel for decades. In the case of motor fuel, “the state legislature has disincentivized the production, distribution, and refining of oil in California,” says Ring, while “cities and counties have followed suit.”
Two refineries are closing their facilities, the companies that own them having determined that it’s become too difficult to do business in California, which is hostile to energy companies that aren’t sucking up taxpayer-provided dollars to build politically preferred solar and wind projects.
“By this time next year,” says the Pacific Research Institute, “there might not be even a dozen refineries left in the state to produce the 38 million gallons of California’s boutique blend that’s consumed every day.”
A quarter of a century ago, there were 23 refineries in California, 40 in 1983. The remaining sites are the only ones in the country that make California’s special formulation – which adds 10 to 15 cents to the cost of a gallon of gasoline – so importing fuel from other states is not a readily available option.
California also has the highest motor fuel tax in the country, an obscene 71 cents a gallon, a low-carbon fuel standard that adds to the cost of refining crude into fuel and restrictive permitting, all of which are taking the state down the rough road of “a potentially unmanageable decline,” says Ring. The state has sued energy providers “to make oil and gas ‘more expensive’ in an effort to disincentivize the use of these energy sources” while a few local governments have started a trend they no doubt hope will catch on: they have outlawed construction of new gas stations.
As of Sunday, California had the highest gasoline prices in the nation – $4.71 a gallon. As painful as that is, it might be considered a bargain by next summer, when gasoline could cost as much as $8 a gallon, says University of Southern California professor Michael Mische – and maybe even more, since Chevron’s El Segundo refinery was damaged in early October by a fire and won’t return to full capacity for some time.
So the pain will be doubled – time burned “a mouldering” in lines waiting to pay the Golden State premium just to get to work, the store and home again.
— Written by the I&I Editorial Board
It’s a shame. The very thing that could very well lead to the end of this Leftist fuel lunacy is the very same thing that was approved (viz gerrymandering) with Prop 50.
California is like the original Die Hard movie,but instead of the star Bruce Willis to save the day, there’s only the slug Gavin Newsom to make the day longer and more onerous.
They don’t call it Califruitopia for nothing.
Good for them nuts. I never met anyone from out there I thought had good sense.
Keep voting Democrat California. They have literally destroyed a once beautiful state which has spread to the entire Left coast.
Why am I so confident that CA gov’t bureaucrats have secured for themselves access to petrol supplies that’re shortage-proof? We won’t see high-ranking members of the Executive, Legislative, or Judicial branches biking or hiking to work anytime soon—unless they’re recording a “look at me, I’m an environmentalist!” self-promotional PR spot.
California is getting the government they want and deserve with their fossil fuel policies. At the same time, CA is destroying their electrical grid with too high a mix of renewables which cause something known as the Duck Curve.
A beautiful state whose residents have voted in the village idiots to govern them.
You’re being unfair to village idiots around the world. Even they know if you need more of something, you don’t piss off the provider of that something.
Please make it $12 per gallon by 2026. And I hope the gas lines are long enough to burn through a tank of gas while they wait. Give Calis what they want and what they vote for – and give it to them good and hard.
No pity, crapifornia dug their own hole here
Our elections are rigged beyond any hope of Statewide conservative wins. Some of us remain stuck here for economic and familial reasons beyond our control. We are prisoners of the DNC crime syndicate and the Feds are not coming to our rescue ever.
“But it has the fourth largest economy in the world”
The idiots that spout this never realize how the policies in place now weren’t how California became the economy it is today.
Yes, CA still has an economy DESPITE the destructive democrat policies that are dragging it into the abyss.
100% Caused by the democrat party – period.
Keep ratcheting up he pain and the exodus of all but the wealthy coastal elite will accelerate. Keep ratcheting up taxes and you’ll lose a lot of them, too.
One wonders when Democrat voters will grow up because they have had enough of their stupid selves and their leaders’ phony but massively costly pandering. How long until they too get sick of the rigged elections built to keep their party’s DNC crime syndicate in charge.
You ALWAYS get the government you DESERVE. LIVE WITH IT! No sympathy here.
Based on the comments that always follow these California sucks articles, you’d think that California existed in a vacuum. I grew up in Southern California , and everyone I grew up with voted conservatively. Sometime in the seventies nuts from the east coast flocked west to escape winter, and join the hippies in Northern California. Soon enough they started filling the cities and towns of central and Southern California because they wanted the physical beauty of our state for themselves. Now they’ve turned it into a metropolitan hellhole- matching the New Jersey, New York, Chicago phenotypes. This mania wasn’t home brewed. It was all your leftists that invaded my state.
California political idiots spent decades trying to destroy the petroleum industry. Now that they have basically succeeded, they are finding out just what that means. Congratulations to all the California Liberal voters that now will have no gas for their cars – note: Texas gas is plentiful at $2.35/gallon.
Governor Nuisance is as idiotic as Moonbeam Brown just another Globalists with saw dust for Brains
The problem in CA is the “Governor.” Pretty much every refinery has been shut down consequently no gas gets to the market. Every problem in CA can be attributed to Nuisance and the idiots in the State Legislature.