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California is a unique gasoline market. The gas has to meet a set of specifications that are not required anywhere else in the country, and are expensive to comply, so California gas is pretty much all refined in California, where 5 refiners control 95%+ of the market. There are no inbound refined products pipelines to California, so even diesel has to be refined there, or imported. Something like 70% of the feeds to California refineries come from Alaska or foreign imports, and the loss of Russian oil has had a disproportionate impact on the state.
There is evidence that California refiners have raised prices simply because they can, adding 40 or 50 cents per gallon to prices.
There is no simple solution. Given the unique atmospheric and geographical issues in the state, California can't really drop the regulations and import non-CARB gas, as that would cause severe increases in air pollution, which the state wants to avoid for obvious reasons.
California is a unique gasoline market. The gas has to meet a set of specifications that are not required anywhere else in the country, and are expensive to comply, so California gas is pretty much all refined in California, where 5 refiners control 95%+ of the market. There are no inbound refined products pipelines to California, so even diesel has to be refined there, or imported. Something like 70% of the feeds to California refineries come from Alaska or foreign imports, and the loss of Russian oil has had a disproportionate impact on the state.
There is evidence that California refiners have raised prices simply because they can, adding 40 or 50 cents per gallon to prices.
There is no simple solution. Given the unique atmospheric and geographical issues in the state, California can't really drop the regulations and import non-CARB gas, as that would cause severe increases in air pollution, which the state wants to avoid for obvious reasons.
Where is this evidence? Would be really useful if you could support your gouging claims.
CA has a long track record of being against fossil fuels, adding restrictions, taxes, penalites, fines while promising to completely terminate those businesses in the future and then blaming that industry for high prices with unsupported claims of gouging etc.
My personal favorite is passing laws that will ban the consumption of the products and then complaining that there isn't enough investment in refineries (which are a long term investment).
I 100% support CA's right to run their state as they see fit but they cause most of their own problems that they then turn around and blame on everybody else.
Stop for a second and imagine going on a show like "Shark Tank" where your business plan is to build a new refinery in California.
Funny how competitive gas pricing is in all the other states, it takes some special effort to damage your own "free markets" badly enough with regulations that they no longer behave like in the rest of the states. lol.
they raise the registration every year (instead of it going down like it does everywhere else, the older your car gets)
In Texas, it's ~$75. Got an old junker? $75. New Ferrari? $75. None of that crap they had in CA and NV. The age of a car has nothing to do with the cost the state incurs due to it being on the road. It's theft, pure & simple.
Something like 70% of the feeds to California refineries come from Alaska or foreign imports, and the loss of Russian oil has had a disproportionate impact on the state.
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Yes, sanctions on Russian oil will impact California but not dramatically
According to the most recent figures compiled by the U.S. Energy Information Administration, 17.6 million barrels of Russian crude was shipped to California in 2021. That works out to about 48,000 barrels a day, or 3 percent of what the state imported last year, that eventually made their way to California refineries.
Hackett said it’s hard to say if the U.S. sanctions on Russian oil will add one more element to the skyrocketing price of gasoline in California because companies like Shell and BP have already been “self sanctioning,” not buying Russian oil after the invasion of Ukraine and looking for other places for crude.
There is evidence that California refiners have raised prices simply because they can, adding 40 or 50 cents per gallon to prices.
Show the evidence. I am genuinely interested.
Quote:
There is no simple solution. Given the unique atmospheric and geographical issues in the state, California can't really drop the regulations and import non-CARB gas, as that would cause severe increases in air pollution, which the state wants to avoid for obvious reasons.
major parts of the Price of a gallon of gas in most US states:
1. Raw cost of a gallon of gas (this varies very little across the lower 48 with the exception of CA)
2. Gas tax (CA is one of the highest)
3. Cost of gas station overhead: Price of land, additional state mandated costs (ie. environmental etc.)
4. Local competition variation
And it's nothing compared to state and local gasoline taxes.
State and local taxes do not make up a significant portion of fuel prices in most states. In Texas, state and Federal gas taxes are 38.4 cents per gallon. California is about $1.18, but 39 cents of that is for some environmental fees, including 2 cents per gallon for the underground storage tank fee that is used to clean up underground tanks, and to help businesses that have a tank spring a leak. That fee sounds reasonable to me.
I will say that gas taxes need to go up, perhaps significantly. In Texas, fuel tax revenue has been flat for almost 20 years, and barely covers the cost of road maintenance, much less construction of new roads. At the same time, a way to tax electric vehicles for road use needs to be developed, so that those drivers pay for using the roads. I am getting tired of people complaining about roads at the same time they demand fuel taxes be reduced. That's a definition of hypocrisy.
Winter's coming, gas prices and home heating fuels are going nowhere but up from here. Expect 40-50% increases to heat your home.
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