This is funny in one of those weird ways, how the oddest things seem to overlap at the same time.
The first is kind of obvious and something I’ve harped on time and again – starting with Gavin Newsom, the oleaginous chief executive of the formerly Golden State. He and his toadies in the state legislature have been picking at the bones of their golden goose – the state’s once robust and thriving homegrown fossil fuel industry – until there’s almost nothing left to scrape from the carcass.
Not only has the oil and gas group been packing up and leaving as the state regulates and shutters and taxes them into oblivion in the name of the climate cult and pursuit of decarbonization. But, the policies authorizing the rapine behavior have been enormously costly to the people who live in the state.
When something untoward happens to that dwindling supply chain, it gets even worse. In February, there was an explosion at a refinery near San Francisco that immediately jumped gas prices thirty cents a gallon and snarled supplies. Worse, it happened right smack in the middle of the switch from winter to summer formulations, which meant refining capacity was already reduced as some plants had shut down to start on the changeover.
Bay Area drivers started the week off with a nearly 30-cent jump in gas prices, and it’s only expected to get worse, experts say.
As of Friday morning, the state average for a gallon of unleaded regular gasoline, $4.82, was 52% higher than the national average of $3.17, according to AAA.
…A chaotic explosion and fire at the Martinez Refining Company on Feb. 1 that injured at least six people is causing major supply issues, especially for Northern California, Patrick De Haan, head of petroleum analysis at Gas Buddy, told SFGATE.
“This is pretty much as bad as it gets for this type of situation,” De Haan said. “It’s probably not going to get any better.”
Just a few hours ago, Phillips 66 announced that, instead of idling a refinery outside of Los Angeles, they would be closing it permanently due to the challenging environment for the fossil fuel sector in the state.
Not for lack of sales, mind you. Because the state of California has declared war on them, who needs to stick around?
ADIOS MUCHACHOS
Phillips 66 PSX, the Houston, TX-based oil giant, has confirmed plans to shut down its 147,000 barrels-per-day Los Angeles refinery by October, CEO Mark Lashier announced at the Piper Sandler Energy Conference. The company had previously indicated it would idle the facility in the fourth quarter of 2025 due to the increasing challenges faced by the refining sector in California.
PSX’s Refinery Closure Could Impact Fuel Supply and Prices
The decision to close the Los Angeles refinery could have a significant impact on California’s fuel supply and prices. Historically, Los Angeles spot CARBOB gasoline prices surged to nearly $5 per gallon in September 2022 and 2023. The shutdown, combined with seasonal refinery maintenance and the transition from summer to winter fuel grades, could create supply constraints in the fall.
Good luck with that seasonal changeover coming this fall.
This only serves to confirm what a new study covered by the California Globe has found: California’s price pain at the pump is entirely self-inflicted and, however much the governor, environmentalists, cultists, and legislators insist otherwise, not the result of greedy corporate price gouging.
A new study by USC Professor Michael Mische found that the factors which have contributed to California’s high gasoline prices over 50-years are self-imposed by state officials and politicians. It turns out that California is its own worst enemy.
Today, I paid $5.15 per gallon of gas in Sacramento, while the AAA national average is $3.078. In Texas today, a gallon of gas will cost you $2.45 to $3.29 – the average in Texas is $2.68. As Professor Mische notes in his study, “Since January 1995 through January 20, 2025, Californians have been paying, on average, 13.1% more for their gasoline than the rest of the nation. Not surprisingly, the average price of retail gasoline in California on March 11, 2025, was $4.694 a gallon, or 52.35% higher per gallon for all formulations than the national average price for gasoline at $3.081, according to AAA.”
As oil companies head for the exits and gasoline for want of refining and supplies necessarily continues to climb, the professor lays out what fossil fuels have meant to the state’s economy over the decades. It’s a sure-fire warning of what’s to come for a state already running hefty deficits when those monstrous tax and paycheck numbers vaporize.
…There is no excuse for Newsom’s negligence of an industry which is an economic powerhouse in the state, providing hundreds of thousands of jobs, over $50 million in paychecks to workers, and billions in state, local and federal taxes.
…The report found that:
- Across California, the oil and gas industry supports 536,770 jobs, generates $53 billion in labor income, and contributes $166 billion of economic activity to California’s Gross State Product (GSP).
- Additionally, it generates $47.9 billion in state and local taxes and $16.3 billion in federal taxes.
Go ahead – drive them out.
…“With 2035 less than a decade away, there is no incentive for or benefit to California oil producers or refiners to invest in additional capacity or capital improvements in the Golden State,” Professor Mische writes. “Ultimately, with the potential for the loss of two or more major refineries, combined with new special blend gasoline standards (LCFS) and the new finished gasoline stock inventory requirements, Californians are inevitably facing escalating gasoline prices at the retail pump, and most likely, increased taxes and fees to compensate for lost gasoline and cap and trade revenues.”
There is no sign that the loons in the legislature or their lame-duck governor will do anything but remain on this crash course.
Fossil fuels are poison, climate cultists insist, and Green, carbon-free is the future – chant the mantra.
So it’s probably just as well that if a ‘climate action’ conference with 300 unicorn fart enthusiasts had to be stranded by a feisty mid-March blizzard in the California mountains, it happened sooner rather than later. The electric vehicles to do mountain rescues aren’t really up to snuff yet.
Luckily, that’s precisely what happened.
Over three hundred people at a climate action conference had to be rescued on Thursday, March 13 after a heavy snowstorm left them stranded at a camp near Big Bear.
The group began to leave YMCA Camp Whittle in Fawnskin, where the conference was held, walking through roughly two feet of snow in an attempt to get to an area where the roads were clear enough for buses to wait.
Electric or gasoline, a stuck bus is a stuck bus and sucks.
Plus, they don’t really sound very self-sufficient, but I suppose that had something to do with being unfamiliar with the climate where they were staying.
…The camp had run out of food, as only enough for the days of the conference, scheduled to end early that morning, had been prepared.
“It took them like an hour to walk down in a blizzard, in two feet of snow, and these people weren’t really prepared for anything of that nature, so we hopped in our snow cat,” Muscarello said. “We told the YMCA to have them start walking, because we were going to have to do two or three trips and if they were walking, it would cut down some of the time to get everyone to safety before dark.”
“Heard you guys needed a ride,” Muscarello can be heard saying in a video the department shared of the rescue on X as he and another member of the fire department pulled up to a group that had remained stuck at the camp. The group packs into the department’s snow cat, holding bags and pillows.
I wonder if any of the foot-weary ‘climate action‘ travelers thought to berate the snowcat operators for not using electric ones.
Climate scientists know exactly what the climate will be like next century, but aren’t so good for periods less than a week.
“300 people rescued from climate conference amidst Big Bear snow storm”
🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡https://t.co/GvKI9235AW pic.twitter.com/OQbrsX1cfZ
— Tony Heller (@TonyClimate) March 16, 2025
This is where checking a ‘weather’ app would have come in handy before you left for a mountain getaway.
In case of inclement weather, one packs snacks and warm clothing, or, if the forecasts are dicey enough, don’t go.
But that’s what you do when you’re referring to actual weather and not unicorn farts.
How nice there was enough expensive CA petrol to get them all off the mountain.
Cosmic.
