Climate cookery and government greed drive up the cost of driving in California

 National Review:

California gas prices could jump to $8 per gallon in 2026 thanks to the planned closure of two oil refineries in the state, according to an estimate by the University of Southern California.

Valero’s Benicia Refinery near San Francisco and Phillips 66’s Wilmington Refinery near Los Angeles are both slated to close in the coming year.

In explaining the company’s decision to close its Benicia refinery, Valero CEO Lane Riggs said on an earnings call that California’s tough “regulatory enforcement environment” was the main factor driving the closure of the state’s sixth-largest refinery.

The April announcement came six months after regional and state air regulators fined the company $82 million for exceeding toxic emissions standards for more than 15 years.

Meanwhile, Phillips 66 announced the closure of its Los Angeles refinery, the seventh largest in the state, just 72 hours after California passed ABX2-1, which requires refiners in the state to hold additional inventories of finished gasoline stock. The company attributed the closure not to any specific California policy but due to “long-term uncertainty” around the future of the refining business in the state.

And Chevron announced last year it would move its headquarters out of San Ramon, Calif., to Houston, Texas, because it was becoming increasingly difficult to do business in the Golden State.

“We have legislated ourselves into a situation where the costs are extraordinarily high and the political environment is extraordinarily harsh,” said Michael Mische, a professor in the practice of management and organization at USC who authored the paper predicting $8-per-gallon gas.

“So the refiners, I think, got to the point where they just said, ‘Enough is enough. We can’t operate under these conditions.”

Experts are predicting dire consequences; the two refineries represent almost 20 percent of in-state gasoline production, or around 6 to 6.2 million gallons of gasoline per day.
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The cost of gas in California is already approaching twice the cost of gas in Texas and headed to three or four times as much.  Will California have enough electricity to fuel the EVs they want to replace fossil fuel cars, and can they produce it without fossil fuel increases?  No wonder the state of California is losing population.