Look at all of the refineries shutting down in California because of the democRATs.
Thank you Sierra Club and Democrat Communist Party.
From the title of the article, I thought it would at least spend some paragraphs describing “Cat’ Cracking.”
Refineries until the 1960’s were essentially giant distilleries. There is a natural division of the crude when heated that results in a predictable and steady amount of light products, gasolines, diesels and heavy less desirable products (bunker oil, asphalt bases, etc.).
With modern techniques of so-called “catalytic distilling,” that traditional ratio can be changed to where a column of crude can give something like 95% gasoline and 5% of the others. Diesel, bunker fuel, home heating oil, etc. used to be cheap because every barrel of gasoline caused lots of these low profit products to be made, too. But these products are no longer excess associated products sold for low cost. They now have to be deliberately made and are no longer “along for the ride.”
An expert could describe all this better than I have. But, this article did not talk about this huge technological change in the refining business. It needed to.
It’s all politics. We are paying a dear price for the ascendancy of the extreme green.
I was in the power industry for decades. Power and petroleum suffer the same problem — the top execs and boards attempt to pacify and mollify the green alligator, but he eats you just the same.
Truck drivers in California would be happy to pay $6.00/gallo for diesel.
“As of October 3, 2026, the average price of diesel in California is $8.38 per gallon, according to AAA data.”
Of course California is sitting on huge reserves of oil and natural gas - but due to Democrat policies such as “green” and “carbon cutting” initiatives, along with onerous regulations, very little of it is being pumped, let alone refined - as two major refineries, that produced ≈ 20% of California’s gasoline, shut down due to
Any luck with gaining authorization to BUILD more refinery capacity? If this is the bottleneck, then a crash priority program of getting such facilities online is much overdue.
The Manhattan Project gave us an atomic weapon in something like three years or so. A complex to convert crude oil into so many of its useful components should not be that much of a stretch, as most of the engineering is already worked out, and the need is there.
“Patrick De Haan, head of petroleum analysis for GasBuddy, which tracks U.S. gasoline prices, estimated that 60% to 65% of the recent diesel price spike stems from Ukrainian attacks on Russian facilities, with the remainder caused by Iran’s efforts to choke off transit through the Strait of Hormuz and other vital transit points.”
https://politifact.com/article/2026/sep/15/diesel-oil-russia-ukraine-prices/
A locomotive can move a ton of freight about 423 miles on a gallon of (diesel) fuel.
If a bottle of California wine weighs four pounds, and one drinks a bottle a day every day for 365 days, and the bottles have to be shipped 3,000 miles to the local warehouse, how much fuel is needed?
At $6.20 a gallon, how much would the fuel cost?
If the fuel went up in price 60% in the past year, how much did the increase cost?
Do not emote, calculate.
“””About the Author
Luis Gonzalez
Luis Gonzalez is the owner and publisher of The Last Wire, an independent blog covering news, politics, opinion, and the rabbit holes beneath the headlines. His work has also appeared in the American Thinker. He has been writing online since 2000 and is the founder of Boiling Frogs, a personal blog launched in 2008. A retired food service professional, Gonzalez spent more than 40 years on both the operator and supply sides of the industry. He hangs his hat at The Briefing Room, where he excels at the role of resident curmudgeon.”””
I only see that Luis is qualified to comment on how long to cook carrots.
Mismanagement? No. Closures — due to Democrat environmental extremism and Republican fear of opposing it.
Blame the greenies who cannot abide any industrial progress.
I prefer the term defective regulation over the term mismanagement.
The more fuel-efficient railroads have a substantial ability to take loads back from the trucking industry:
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/RAILFRTCARLOADSD11
You can call is mismanagement if you wish, but refinery capex has always been tied to the price of oil. Cheap oil = no money for investment other than annual turnarounds where vital repairs are made. It’s always been this way, just ask anyone who sells capital equipment to the refining market.
Did you notice that EIA discontinued the Weekly Status Report? If anyone has found the location of the current supply in storage bands covering the 5 year range please let me know where it is. They put the range bands in the bottom of the front page but nothing for Jet, Diesel, Gasoline, Propane etc.
The Weekly status report was too convenient to show just how bad our storage is, so they discontinued it. After decades of this very good and convenient report being available they stopped it.
The Weekly Petroleum Full Report PDF has been discontinued effective
September 23, 2026. For current Weekly Petroleum Status Report
information, please visit https://www.eia.gov/petroleum/supply/weekly/
Exactly. Everybody’s looking at Trump re high prices when we should be looking at that lunatic aunt Sophie and her environazi greenie insanity and not letting us build refineries. So to speak.