California has a gas-price mystery. Too high, but why? | Hacker News Reader

California has a gas-price mystery. Too high, but why?

wsj.com

14 pointserehweb9 comments

Paywalled, but from another piece, “ high California gas prices should encourage supply to be shipped to California from other states. But this doesn’t happen, because no other state formulates California’s unique gasoline blend. If gasoline is imported into California, which does occur when a California refinery goes offline for repair or maintenance, it comes from either South Korea or New Brunswick, Canada, by ship. This process is expensive, and it can take weeks”

https://www.hoover.org/research/why-are-gas-prices-so-high-c...

Part of the reason for this is also that California (and I believe PNW) do not have pipeline access to the rest of the continental US, so any oil shipped from other states would have to either be shipped via rail, or at least through Panama if by ship.

Isn't another part of it LA Metro's historic smog problem? Like this wasn't a "save the icebergs" thing lots of kids were dying of respiratory illness.

Good point. It seems a global approach will be needed, which means we need to lead the way and pay more: https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/03/03/518323094...

Most people seem to forget LA has a ton of oil wells (see quote below for the numbers). They are typically pretty well disguised so people don't notice it a lot. Last year LA finally decided to stop allowing new wells and start phasing out existing ones but over the next 20 years.

From the article I linked: In a 12-0 vote, the council on Friday approved an ordinance it began drafting earlier this year that will immediately ban new extraction and shut down existing operations within 20 years."

Same Article: "There are 26 oil and gas fields and more than 5,000 active and idle wells in LA. Wells are spread out all over the city, including Wilmington, Harbor Gateway, downtown, West LA, South LA and the northwest San Fernando Valley."

https://www.cnbc.com/2022/12/05/los-angeles-bans-oil-and-gas....

isn't this exactly why it is more expensive? less supply because of the formula, the formula is more expensive to make --> so higher prices

Not a mystery at all. California uses a unique blend. They therefore have cut themselves off from the majority of suppliers.

More of a “wtf did you think would happen” than a real mystery if you ask me.

https://archive.ph/AzuHz

Definitely not going to the roads I can for sure tell you that.

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