When and if the world's fourth-largest economy implodes, you'll be able to say, "I told you so," thanks to a chilling report today from two experts in oil refining and energy production.
Writing for Watt's Up With That?, Ronald Stein and Mike Ariza describe "the impending collapse of California's transportation fuel infrastructure," and conclude the state is "becoming a national security risk" to the rest of the country.
It seems impossible to imagine, but the Golden State was once an energy powerhouse. Oil production peaked in 1985, then declined as fields matured, offshore production was heavily restricted, and environmental laws strongly discouraged new drilling. As for refining, Sacramento has been at war with that industry for most of the 21st century. California had more than 40 refineries in the 1990s, and fewer than a dozen today. State laws and regulations (plus cap and trade) make it just too expensive to refine there.
California's former powerhouse status was by necessity, not happenstance. Stein and Ariza call California an "energy island" cut off from the rest of the nation by the Sierra Mountains. They report that the "58 million gallons of transportation fuel" that the state requires each and every day breaks down like so:
- 11 million gallons/day for jet fuel for the state's military and international airports.
- 10 million gallons/day for diesel for the state's trucking and construction industries.
- 37 million gallons/day for gasoline for the state's more than 36 million vehicles.
"If those transportation fuels are not made in California," the authors say, "they have to be made in refineries located in the Gulf or East Coast, or in foreign countries with gross polluting refineries and shipped across the Pacific Ocean via polluting tankers."
There are no pipelines across the Sierras, and "the Ports of Los Angeles, Long Beach, and Oakland are NOT designed to import those humongous volumes of transportation fuels."
Stein and Ariza conclude that without "immediate federal intervention via the Defense Production Act, California, its neighboring states, and the U.S. military face the potential for a total supply chain collapse" as the state's refining capacity continues to decline.
When the Iran War went hot earlier this year, Forbes Senior Contributor Robert Rapier warned that "California is uniquely exposed" to overseas energy disruptions — precisely because they no longer drill or refine enough domestically.
"This is not a new concern," Rapier added. In a 2019 column, he "detailed how the state’s declining production and lack of pipeline connectivity left it dependent on crude that transits the Persian Gulf. That structural vulnerability remains." In fact, it's only grown worse, due almost entirely to the state's energy-hostile government.
How bad is it, really? Stein and Ariza note that "In just the last two months, California has been forced to import more jet fuel from the Gulf and East Coasts, via ships through the Panama Canal, than in the past 36 years combined."
And while we just happen to be at war, California's military reserves are being depleted: "Despite Gulf Coast refineries running at a grueling 98% capacity, California still required substantial emergency draws from the nation’s military fuel storage reserves to prevent a systemic collapse and fuel rationing."
I knew things were bad, but had no clue they were this bad.
The worst part might be that nobody with the power to reverse course looks at the state's dangerously deteriorating situation and says, "Hey, maybe we need to reverse course."
Instead, it's full speed ahead — at least until there's no gas left in the tank.
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