Yep, it's a low sulfur, lower volatility gasoline blend (https://thebreakthrough.org/issues/energy/how-california-reg...) which apparently cuts harmful exhaust emissions like carbon monoxide and NOx.

Yes.

> Newsom would start to increase production

Newsom is not a refinery nor does he own any refineries. He cannot increase any production by definition.

Yes. Between 2020 and present The refining capacity in California declined by 35% from 1.9 MM BPD to 1.2 MM BPD with the closure of 4 refineries:

Marathon Martinez (2020) converted to renewables. Crude capacity 157 MBD, Renewables capacity 48 MBD

P66 Rodeo (2022) converted to renewables. Crude capacity 120 MBD, Renewables capacity 50 MBD

P66 LA (2025) shutdown. Crude capacity 139 MBD

Valero Bencia (2026) shutdown. Crude capacity 145 MBD

The California Air Resource Board (CARB) has promulgated a revised Cap and Invest rule that threatens the viability of the remaining refineries. All the remaining California refineries have sent CARB, the Governor and the CA legislature letters pointing this out.

California is now a net importer of gasoline following these refinery closures.

Dogs and cats were being eaten, you see. And did you hear her laugh?

He's trying to control the oil that goes to China. First, take Maduro then close the Straight of Hormuz (to prevent oil going to China). The rest is just collateral damage as far as he's concerned.

This is all about keeping China down, and preserving American Hegemony. That's his definition of "making America great again". He doesn't care that you're paying more for food, gasoline, etc. and that the rest of the third world will soon be starving.

Gulf States get a swap line (can't let Wall St crash), but you get no bail out because the elites don't care that you are hurting. They care about the Gulf States hurting because that ultimately means Wall St will crash which would hurt the Billionaire elites.

So to sum up, the reason is maintain America's Hegemony and protect the Billionaire class.

Those rules around special gasoline were made when both federal and California car exhaust regulations were much looser than today, and electric cars were a complete pipe dream. I've seen estimates ranging for savings from $.25 to $1 per gallon if California dropped the requirements.

>Would you really want to hurt children for cheaper gas?

Nice appeal to emotion.

Texas has plenty of refineries and the children there aren’t dying or choking on the air.

> Would you really want to hurt children for cheaper gas? Really?

Yes. Most voters would, too. "Cheaper gas" understates how serious even a $20/week increase in living costs can be for a household on the margin.

Refining light crude is essentially the same process as heavy crude with fewer steps. US refineries are designed to handle virtually any kind of crude and are highly configurable. That flexibility is part of what makes their refinery business so successful. US refinery capacity is ~50% larger than their domestic oil production; it is a major export business for the US.

The real cost to not processing heavy crude oil is that many refinery assets will be sitting idle because they aren't needed to process light crude.

It may be a bad idea (for various reasons), but it is one already being floated. Here is a press release just today from a California congressman who is proposing a bill to this effect.

https://sherman.house.gov/media-center/press-releases/congre...

If you agree with the parent that Americans are going to feel more energy market pain in the coming months I would imagine the pressure for this will only increase.

> An export ban wouldn’t really help much

It could help in the long term by underwritig refinery retooling. The problem is you'd almost certainly need public support for those investments, given they could be undone by the lifting of such a ban. (An export ban would also trash America's reputation with our import partners.)

> An export ban wouldn’t really help much: US oil production is (now) predominantly light crude, while US refinery capacity is oriented towards heavy crude from the gulf or Venezuela.

That's not too much of a problem. A refinery tooled for heavy sour crude technically can process light, heavy, sour and sweet crude - the other way around would be an issue because you'd need to construct hydrocracker and desulfurizer stages first.

The issue is a financial one. A refinery is often a multi-billion dollar asset, and having significant parts of its value sit around unused for prolonged times means write-offs which means stonk number go down, and as we all know there is nothing more important for the economy than the stonk market.

Another, but smaller, problem is that running a refinery on different crude compositions means that the volume ratio of the various oil products changes, and the refinery may find itself sitting on more, say, heavy fuel oil than it can store, sell and ship. And once the tanks are full, production has to stop.

> US refinery capacity is oriented towards heavy crude from the gulf or Venezuela.

Or from Alberta.

Fake numbers, but I have heard it is something like the US produces 100 units of light crude -exports it all, and imports 50 units of heavy. Net exporter, but the stuff we use domestically for gas refineries comes from elsewhere.

Technically, the refineries can be retooled to take a different blend, but it is expensive to do.

It’s actually harder (requires more advanced technology) to refine heavy and sour crude. The US refining industry process this type of oil mainly because it’s more profitable not because of some limitation.

American oil on the other hand (As in extracted out of the ground) is actually too high quality for domestic consumption therefore gets shipped overseas and sold at a premium. The weird economics of this are made possible by globalization. While it’s not fungible on a dime it’s easy to solve and the US really does hold all the cards when it comes to the petroleum industry.

US crude oil is exported to foreign refineries for blending purposes. By blending low-quality crude with high-quality crude it can reduce the total costs to the refiner even after accounting for the fact that you had to buy high-quality crude to improve the properties of the domestic crude.

How do you think the UAE leaving OPEC will effect the oil markets in the coming months and years? Its being touted as having a major impact.

Right I forgot we waived the jones act. Refiners are hard to come by in CA though as they keep shutting down

I fully understand the 240 vs 120 in US houses.

The difference is other countries have 240 running everywhere. So apartment garages can have cars charging (slower than the max possible speed but faster than if they were on 120v), without tens of thousands of dollars in retrofits.

I just got an estimate of 3k for running basically 6ft of conduit for a new 240v line in my own garage (my breaker is right next to my door, super short run!)

Now thinking about my last condo I lived in, retrofitting even a small condo parking garage for EV chargers for, say, 20 spaces. Let's estimate 30 feet on average line run per space. Assuming a discount on price, maybe 12k per parking space to install a 240 plug, with lines split to cover multiple spaces.

The price is just absurd. That's 1/3rd the cost of a reasonably priced car.

Its not that 220v is missing, its that its special.

An unmodified garage in australia will have plenty of unused 240v plugs

and if they did want to modify, they can pay to have 3-phase 415v

It adds large cost and is a hassle

In other countries every outlet is 240, a regular extension cord to outlets in a apartment complex garage is 240. It is less overall amps than the beefy 240v an American dryer plugs into, but it is good enough.

Meanwhile $3k to get 5 feet of 240 ran in a conduit and an outlet installed in the US.

For many apartment and condo complexes, it just isn't doable as a reasonable retrofit.

Yeah this confuses me. I was under the impression that every electric oven and clothes dryer in the US was 240 (220) volts already. I was not aware or tracking that 240v was an issue. Is that the case in places in the US?

They are being strangled, it’s their choice to tap out is how I would put it.

The improvement in air quality is due to the clean air act, catalytic converters, and the shuttering of industry, the gas blend plays a minor part. Even then, with gas so much higher it will materially make peoples lives worse, at some point society would be better off getting rid of the blend.

Yeah, I remember flying into LAX in the late 80s and early 90s. Smog so thick it looked like a physical obstacle.

Whatever they're doing seems to be working nicely.

I paid the equivalent of $12.50 a gallon for diesel at the peak price a month or so ago.

There are plenty of crude oil and refined product pipelines in California.

For example crude oil is produced mid state in the San Joaquin valley and pumped by pipeline to the Bay Area and LA refineries.

Refined product from LA is delivered by pipeline from LA refineries as far east as Phoenix and up to Las Vegas.

Building new pipelines in California though is…challenging.

Reaching zero motor fuel sales is foreseeable? By when do you foresee it?

How much below the peak is current sales?

Not just scrapping them - literally paying foreign companies billions of dollars to not build wind farms. Illegally as well, there’s absolutely no authority for these payments to happen outside of Congress.

Yeah but he wouldn't have been in the position to do any of that if the people who funded his campaign like the Adelsons, Kushners, Musk, Linda McMahon, Lutnick and so forth didn't contribute millions to his campaign and leverage whatever other resources they have to promote him.

And they in turn couldn't do any of that if the teams of professionals from lawyers, accountants to engineers didn't help them acquire and use those resources.

Just like violent crime is overwhelmingly perpetuated by a handful of repeat offenders we see the same pattern in white collar crime. A handful of white collar criminals cause damage to American society that cascades through the world resulting in food and fuel shortages that we're talking about.

I get that it's really hard but you have to view this dispassionately and from a systems thinking perspective. The professionals and oligarchs are responsible for the mad king scenario that we're all living through right now. They're responsible for the social decay that affects us daily.

And it's just going to keep getting worse and worse once the mad king eventually goes the way all mad kings do.

Correct, he is the symptom of the problem created by himself.

The Iran nuclear deal rode off the back of Stuxnet and concessions were easier with that damage. The recent strikes with the B2 were largely ineffectual so well done.

> There's plenty of crude oil in CA. Certainly enough for California's needs

California has 1.7 billion barrels of proven reserves [1] and imports 373 million barrels a year [2]. That's 5 years of imports in the ground. (At current rates, California depletes its proven reserves in 2040.)

[1] https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=PET&s=R...

[2] https://www.energy.ca.gov/data-reports/energy-almanac/califo...

that is not my understanding or what is implied in the article. where would i go to find this fact?

He's the best, the best at everything. Including tanking the world economy...

Bicycle doesn't carry a family of 4, or carry loads of dirt or pick up lumber or tow a trailer.

Also my e-bike needs more maintenance than my EV. Go figure.

Conservative bots are out strong in Pacific NW forums slop posting against new "green energy" energy projects. Blaming the (not yet built!) green energy projects for upcoming rate increases.

Nevermind that solar is why Texas has such cheap electricity prices.

> no gas bans.

I'm all for the free market.

Price into gas the expected increase in healthcare costs due to air and ground water pollution. Stop subsidizing it for non-critical uses.

Same for extra tire dust from EVs (that shit is toxic AF).

Right now I see astroturfing that EVs are why our electricity infrastructure is overloaded (rather than blaming 50 years of neglect), or that the cars burst into flame (no more than other cars and newer battery tech not any more).

Subsidizing EVs is interesting because it is obvious that EVs are the future (battery tech gets ~6% better year over year, compounding, ICE designs haven't seen improvements in decades), but recent removal of government support caused American car companies to basically give up on anything except the domestic car market, which spells their long term doom (which the Ford CEO has pretty much come out and admitted.)

In this case it is.

So what, how many Iranians did the US kill?

Sure, I'm trying to say that the US is not dependent on oil from the middle east, it produces a lot by itself

Much of what fossil fuels are used for is to refine fossil fuels, a use that we don't need to entirely replace.

But the more renewables get used the less true that is.