Green Retreat: California Eases Carbon-Market Costs For Oil Refiners

California's green-energy regime has hollowed out the state's refining and oil industry, leaving motorists paying the highest gasoline prices in the country. AAA data show the state gasoline average now north of $6 per gallon, compared with a national average of roughly $4.36 as of Saturday morning.

The result of political blowback in California over unaffordable gasoline and diesel prices at the pump is a retreat from left-wing climate policies that could offer relief to motorists, Bloomberg News reports.

On Friday, the California Air Resources Board voted to create up to $4 billion in free carbon allowances for oil refiners and other industrial polluters. This will help them more easily comply with the state's greenhouse gas limits under the Cap-and-Invest program.

Earlier this year, CARB proposed further tightening emission limits by removing 118 million allowances from the market to keep the state on track to meet its 2030 climate targets. For refiners, that would mean further reducing emissions or paying more for allowances, with mounting costs already pushing them out of the state. 

The move will help contain gasoline prices at the pump and prevent refiners from leaving the state, especially after energy disruptions in the Gulf region pushed California gasoline prices above $6.

Take US oil giant Chevron, which recently warned that California is careening toward an energy crisis because of the Iran war, and that the company may quit refining oil in the state unless officials roll back taxes and regulations.

California is highly exposed to the disruption rippling through commodity markets, as it imports about 20% of its refined fuels from Asia. But as extensively discussed here, oil product shipments from China, South Korea, Singapore, and elsewhere have been disrupted, leaving Asian nations struggling to meet domestic demand, let alone export to California.

Chevron’s oil refining head Andy Walz recently warned that the potential for fuel shortages in California is his worst fear: “We have refineries in Asia that are having to cut crude, and so they’re going to make fewer products,” Walz said in an interview in late March. “What if San Francisco doesn’t have the jet fuel it needs? Or Los Angeles? Or maybe gasoline?”

Since California is disconnected from the U.S. fuel-making centers of Texas and Louisiana, it is essentially an energy island.

Walz noted in March, days after the U.S.-Iran conflict broke out, that tightening California's cap-and-invest program "made no sense when you look at global tensions right now."

California's green regime has produced nothing but disastrous consequences for households, making fuel prices the highest in the nation:

• California Refinery Closures Spell Trouble for Fuel Prices, Supply: Experts

There are national security implications stemming from the green regime, especially for the state with the nation's largest concentration of military personnel and national security activity.

The retreat on climate targets by state regulators is a win for consumers and the nation, as green is nothing more than inflationary and degrowth, hitting working-poor households the hardest with unaffordable gasoline and diesel prices at the pump.

Elsewhere, the US-Iran conflict has forced left-wing states such as New York, Massachusetts, and others to dial back unrealistic climate ambitions.