Add The California Post on Google Californians are paying the nation’s highest gas prices this Memorial Day weekend, at $6 per gallon and above. What makes it worse is that it doesn’t have to be this way.
For some reason, California has an energy suicide pact in place, and the state seems intent on following through on that self-destructive deal.
Fortunately, people are now awake to the fact that California’s own energy policies are largely to blame for the uniquely high cost of fuel, and the political class is getting pretty nervous.
That was recently highlighted when California Chevron station owners posted signs on the pumps showing drivers exactly how Sacramento policy was the cause of much of their pain at the pump.
A man standing on a rooftop in front of a Chevron gas station sign that displays gas prices of over $8.00 per gallon. Jonathan Alcorn For CA Post Governor Gavin Newsom’s media squad, which was clearly unhappy about Chevron’s public criticism, called for a boycott of Chevron over the issue of –– wait for it –– “unbranded gasoline.”
Now it’s true that unbranded gasoline, which is basic fuel without the additives that commercial chains often include, may come from the same refineries and pipelines as name-brand gas, but that has nothing to do with the high prices.
Decades of California’s one-party energy policy have inflated the baseline price for everyone, regardless of the brand name or whether the fuel has a brand at all.
Also to blame are the 30 years of restrictive regulations, refinery hurdles, blocked drilling, strict fuel standards, and an unrealistic climate agenda that have eroded California’s refining capacity and driven up costs.
Every gallon of California gasoline has layer upon layer of state and local taxes, lplus ocal fees for this and that, and onerous environmental mandates that are now built into the price at the pump.
The industry has warned for years that Sacramento’s continued hostility toward it risks supply reliability and even higher prices ahead –– warnings that Sacramento continues to dismiss even today. California drivers continue to lose, regardless of the logo on the pump.
That is how we got here, and no state-sponsored boycott of one company will change that.
I must point out that Chevron is not a member of our organization, the US Oil & Gas Association. We are independent oil and gas producers from across the nation with just one job –– to produce the crude to sell to someone else, who then turns that crude into many different things.
California Gov, Gavin Newsom speaking in the US Capitol. Anadolu via Getty Images Like everyone else, our companies are impacted by economic and national security issues as well. But when bad state energy policy, which is hobbling California’s $4 trillion economy, begins to bleed over to other states, the nation is impacted, too. So we speak up.
Representing companies from the fly-over states out of Washington, DC, we have a front-row seat to how quickly disconnected the elected and unelected “leaders” can become.
If politicians are picked up or dropped off in cars driven by someone else, which they usually are, then they are likely insulated from the consequences of all the decisions they make for others.
The governor is clearly protected from the energy policies he has pushed for years. Newsom and his team can try to deflect all they want, but California drivers know the unbranded truth, and they are unhappy.
Tim Stewart is president of the US Oil & Gas Association.
