When you add costly formula mandates, taxes, permit fees, lack of new refineries, while some have closed, why blame oil companies for YOUR policy to kill off gas cars. You are blaming oil companies for high gas prices but demand a Special Session to raise gas taxes—which will raise gas prices!
“More importantly, though, oil prices are not the only factor affecting gasoline prices. This is something that the governor of an anti-gasoline state such as California should especially appreciate.
California is known for having the nation’s highest gasoline prices — currently far above all other states at $6.33 per gallon — in part because it requires unique gasoline blends under state law that purport to limit pollution. That adds a lot of expense, but even that isn’t the only issue, as a top executive from Valero, the oil refining and fuel supply company, pointed out in a brutal letter to state officials days before Newsom’s tweet.”
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California’s green bureaucracy gets the verbal smackdown it deserves
by Washington Examiner, 10/11/22
No one has ever gone broke betting that Democrats will return to the same old dopey talking points about big corporations causing all the world’s evils. They are forced to go back to this well quite often because so many of the world’s problems are, in fact, caused by Democratic policy choices.
Often, the corporate subjects of their ire will simply sit back and take the abuse, knowing full well that they’ll still be making money after the Democratic politicians are done grandstanding. Sometimes, they will adopt some kind of insincere wokeness initiative or donate to Democratic politicians in order to defuse the conflict. But sometimes, a business or industry strikes back, and that’s when things get fun.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom, who recently tried to blame the massive net exodus of residents from his state on a completely irrelevant Trump administration policy, took to Twitter last Thursday to blame oil companies for rising gasoline prices.
“Here are the facts,” he wrote on Oct. 6. “Crude oil prices are DOWN. And yet … Gas prices are up. That’s because greedy oil companies are ripping you off. They are raking in record profits at your expense.”
Set aside the fact that such conspiracy theories are flatly stupid, capable of fooling only the most credulous. The truth is, by the time Newsom sent that tweet, crude oil prices had been rising sharply for two weeks, up about 16% as of Newsom’s tweet, and they have continued to rise since, to their highest point since August. So even Newsom’s basic factual assertion about oil prices being “DOWN” was untrue, capital letters and all.
More importantly, though, oil prices are not the only factor affecting gasoline prices. This is something that the governor of an anti-gasoline state such as California should especially appreciate.
California is known for having the nation’s highest gasoline prices — currently far above all other states at $6.33 per gallon — in part because it requires unique gasoline blends under state law that purport to limit pollution. That adds a lot of expense, but even that isn’t the only issue, as a top executive from Valero, the oil refining and fuel supply company, pointed out in a brutal letter to state officials days before Newsom’s tweet.
Officials on the California Energy Commission, such as Newsom, had rather foolishly insinuated that there was some kind of gas price conspiracy afoot and demanded an immediate explanation from oil companies. But they got a much more forceful response than they had bargained for from Scott Folwarkow, Valero’s vice president for state government affairs.
“For Valero, California is the most expensive operating environment in the country and a very hostile regulatory environment for refining,” wrote Folwarkow. “California policymakers have knowingly adopted policies with the expressed intent of eliminating the refinery sector. California requires refiners to pay very high carbon cap-and-trade fees and burdened gasoline with cost of the low carbon fuel standards. With the backdrop of these policies, not surprisingly, California has seen refineries completely close or shut down major units. When you shut down refinery operations, you limit the resilience of the supply chain.”
If that wasn’t brutal enough, the last paragraph was absolutely scathing.
“We believe the commission experts understand that California cannot mandate a unique fuel that is not readily [available] outside of the West Coast, and then burden or eliminate California refining capacity and expect to have robust fuel supplies,” wrote Folwarkow.
California’s entire state government, legislative and executive, is completely clueless about energy policy. Only a state government this badly run could try to force everyone to buy electric cars, only to be forced into begging users not to charge them, because the state’s global warming laws are preventing it from generating and delivering enough electricity at peak hours.
Already, California is overly reliant on importing electricity from other states and on unreliable renewable energy generation methods that cannot be called up on demand, such as nuclear, coal, and natural gas power.
California is the only state in the country to suffer from regular rolling blackouts. Those blackouts are a choice — the choice you make when you vote for Newsom and other Democrats. Many Californians are making a different choice by moving away. Hopefully, they can all afford the gasoline they need to get out of California.
