CALIFORNIA'S COSTLY GAS

By Bob Walsh

 

Gasoline has gone up about 50 cents per gallon here locally in about two weeks.  Yesterday I paid $5 for gas.  Today the gas is $5.29 at the same station.  

There was a guy on the tube from Chevron two days ago.  He implied very strongly that if the formerly great state of California doesn't get its shit together Chevron may shut down all refining in CA and he implied broadly that other refiners are considering the same.  He pointed out specifically that CA is getting ready to go into it's MANDATORY "summer mixture" gasoline blend that is used NOWHERE ELSE in the country making CA gasoline even more costly and hard to get.  

There are no pipelines to bring gas into CA right now, though that is being worked on.  It is NOT an instant process.  There are not enough tankers or HazMat certified drivers to bring as into the state and tankers and for that matter railroad tank cars are much more expensive and much less safe than pipelines for this sort of thing.

With any sort of luck this bullshit will hit HARD just before the primary elected and hard again just before the general election.  If it doesn't we will end up with damn few people in CA that are net tax payers rather than net tax consumers.