Free Republic

Multiple refineries in California have recently declared their intentions to shutter operations, leaving the Golden State uncertain about future fuel supplies and impacts on prices at the pump. Valero Energy Corp. was the latest to make such an announcement, alerting the California Energy Commission (CEC) last month that it would “idle, restructure or cease refining operations” at its Benicia refinery by the end of April 2026. The Valero notice followed similar news at Phillips 66 in October, when that company said it would be ceasing operations at its Los Angeles-area refinery in the fourth quarter of 2025. Firms are attributing...

With Valero announcing the pending closure of one of its two remaining California refineries, the state will lose at least 18% of its current refining capacity by the end of 2026. Because California is an “energy island,” meeting demand for California and the parts of Nevada and Arizona that rely on its refineries will require costly imports of volatile fuel by emissions-heavy tanker ships. California Gov. Gavin Newsom has long blamed rising gas prices on refiners’ “price gouging,” but even though his own administration has said that it has no found no evidence of such, he called a special legislative...

By: Hassan.Mahmoudi Iran and Venezuela, both engulfed with similar crises, have economic and trade relationship since the time of Iran’s former president, Mahmood Ahmadi-Nezhad. On Thursday, May 1, Elliot Abrams, the head of Venezuela’s affairs in the US government said that during this week Iran has had many more flights to this country: "Our assumption is that those planes that come from Iran are bringing things for the oil industry, and they return full of gold as a form of payment," El Politico quoted Elliot Abrams, the U.S. Special manager for Venezuela as saying. On April 30, 2020, the Bloomberg...

"No pipelines exist to feed gasoline in from other states.".. If you thought that the LA wildfires exposed just how mismanaged California is, you ain’t seen nothing yet. Russia. China. Venezuela. Iran. More than a dozen countries make gasoline at state-owned refineries. Could California be next on the list? Let’s see what do all of those places have in common? Tyrannical regimes. Miserable lives for much of the population. High levels of migration. Radical politics. Sure, California belongs on that list. California policymakers are considering state ownership of one or more oil refineries, one item on a list of options...

Last week, Phillips 66 said it would shut down its Los Angeles oil refinery by the end of next year. Now, refining peer Valero Energy Corp is suggesting it could be next. Valero, the United States’ second-largest refiner by capacity, is keeping all options “on the table” for its two California refineries. According to the company’s Chief Executive Lane Riggs, this is due to the increasing regulatory pressure that has pervaded California.

Short on the heels of another major refinery closure, Valero signaled it is considering closing its two California refineries that produce over 14% of the state’s gasoline. Refinery closures already have the state importing 8% of its gasoline supply, which means the state could soon have to significantly increase its imports of refined products such as gasoline, on top of its existing reliance on the Middle East and South America for the majority of its crude oil. Valero announced its profit is down significantly due to very low margins from its refinery business, prompting a question during its earning call...

California regulators have proposed a variety of government intrusions into the petroleum industry in order to combat future energy price surges, according to a report released Thursday by the California Energy Commission (CEC). As the Golden State continues to pursue its green agenda, the CEC expects some of California’s nine oil refineries to be shuttered due to falling demand, which would give the remaining refineries increased pricing power and raise the possibility of a surge in gas prices, the study concluded. To solve this problem, the commission proposed a variety of government interventions, including expanded regulation on private refineries, the...

The USA has called for Ukraine not to attack Russian refineries despite Russia's widespread offensive against several energy facilities in Ukraine. The Department of Defense has warned that such an attack could bring another spike in fuel prices worldwide. Michaelo Podoliak, advisor to Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy, claimed that such facilities were legitimate military targets. In a recent interview, he also claimed that such an attack was not only legitimate but desirable on a worldwide level in order to weaken Russia's hold on the energy lobby. “Ukraine must destroy Russia's refineries. They have no impact on worldwide pricing, and are...

A breakthrough moment for sustainable aviation fuel / Depositphotos A simple, cheap pretreatment promises to radically cut the price of sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) made from waste wood biomass – potentially making it cost-competitive with fossil-based jet fuel, while cutting down emissions by up to 80%. SAF isn't a perfect green solution to aviation – indeed, no perfect solution exists at this point. Running SAF instead of jet fuel still produces carbon dioxide – but it's a higher-purity fuel, producing up to 3% more energy while burning cleaner, with heavily reduced sulfur and particulate emissions. It eliminates the entire emissions...

PART 2 OF 3. The Hunter Biden Files Hunter Biden and his business partners were involved in discussions about possible deals in dozens of foreign countries, often corrupt backwaters, at times invoking official channels like ambassadors, emails reviewed by The Daily Wire show. While most attention has focused on Ukraine, where a gas company paid the now-president’s son tens of thousands of dollars a month while he was in deep crack addiction, and China, Hunter and his partners at a consultancy called Rosemont Seneca were eager to do business in a vast array of other places. The map below highlights...

America’s “inability to build things” is crippling it, the economics writer Noah Smith wrote in a blog published on Monday. The “things” he’s referring to are housing, transit, solar power, transmission lines, semiconductor production, you name it. They’re being stalled because of permitting and development rules in particular but the NIMBY (or “not-in-my-backyard”) crew in general. Smith is a well-known economics commentator, but his “bit of a rant” struck a chord with many on Twitter, including its CEO, Elon Musk. Smith’s blog post, on his personal Substack, stresses that America used to be unwilling to spend on building things, but...

Former President Donald Trump detailed his plan for “reclaiming American energy dominance” and creating the “power plants, pipelines, grids, ports, refineries, and shipping terminals of tomorrow” in his latest campaign ad video shared exclusively with Breitbart News.Trump, who remains the lone candidate in the 2024 presidential primary field, pledged to “bring back a pro-American energy policy at long last” if he is elected to the Oval Office, unveiling his plan to de-regulate the industry, once again exit the Paris Climate Accords, and “rapidly” approve “worthy” domestic energy infrastructure projects to lower prices and create jobs for Americans:I will deploy a...

U.S. energy executives told Jennifer Granholm that shuttered crude oil refineries won’t restart, Valero’s Chief Executive Joe Gorder said on Tuesday. The comments were made to the U.S. Energy Secretary at a recent White House meeting with energy executives, Reuters reported on Tuesday. “The one interesting thing that came out of it, too, was there was consideration for the ability to restart refining capacity that had been shut down, and I think the general sentiment was that wasn’t going to happen,” Gorder said. Limited U.S. refinery capacity—and perhaps more critically, refinery capacity in specific U.S. geographic areas, known as PADDs—has...

California Gov. Gavin Newsom allowed local refineries to produce their “winter blend” of gasoline a month early in a bid to reduce gas prices, which have soared back to near-record levels even as prices in the rest of the country have slowly fallen from their peak. The move repeats a similar effort by Gov. Jerry Brown ten years ago, and is an admission that the state’s environmental regulations are partially to blame for the fact that California has higher prices than the rest of the country — more than $2.50 higher, as of today.

Rosneft Germany will be placed under ‘trustee administration’ Germany has today announced it is taking control of three Russian-owned refineries. The Federal Network Agency, the German electricity and gas regulator has said it has been appointed fiduciary of Berlin-based Rosneft Deutschland GmbH and RN Refining & Marketing GmbH. It has been reported that the decision has been to help the country secure energy supply ahead of a predicted ‘tough’ winter. Germany’s regulator said: “The fiduciary management, ordered on the basis of the Energy Security Act, means that the original owner no longer has authority to issue instructions. “The fiduciary is...

In 2007, the U.S. Congress mandated the blending of biofuels such as corn-based ethanol into gasoline. One of the top goals: reducing greenhouse gas emissions. But today, the nation´s ethanol plants produce more than double the climate-damaging pollution, per gallon of fuel production capacity, than the nation´s oil refineries, according to a Reuters analysis of federal data. The average ethanol plant chuffed out 1,187 metric tons of carbon emissions per million gallons of fuel capacity in 2020, the latest year data is available. The average oil refinery, by contrast, produced 533 metric tons of carbon. The ethanol plants´ high emissions...

The Department of Transportation declared a regional emergency Saturday affecting four Midwest states after a fire earlier this week caused an “unanticipated shutdown” of a BP oil refinery in Indiana. BP Whiting, the sixth largest refinery in the U.S. refining over 400,000 barrels of oil per day, shut down to undergo damage assessment after a fire knocked out the plant’s electrical power and cooling water systems on Wednesday, Reuters reported. The shutdown caused the federal government to take action and address the looming shortage of fuel output that will affect Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, and Wisconsin, states that collectively receive up...

Some of the Democrats who have been spiking the ball in the end zone after the passage of the so-called “Inflation Reduction Act” probably didn’t read all of the finer details in the bill. They’ve been celebrating its passage along with Joe Biden as the “biggest climate legislation” to ever be passed. They have also been grudgingly thanking West Virginia Democrat Joe Manchin for getting the bill over the finish line. But it turns out that Manchin snuck in a few items that haven’t drawn many headlines yet and the climate warriors aren’t going to be very happy about them....

The data shows that there were 4,082,478,000 barrels of crude oil produced in 2021, an amount that is greater than any time in American history, except 2020 and the peak in 2019. 2017: 3,415,257,000 Barrels of Crude Oil2018: 3,993,288,000 Barrels of Crude Oil2019: 4,485,635,000 Barrels of Crude Oil2020: 4,129,563,000 Barrels of Crude Oil2021: 4,082,478,000 Barrels of Crude Oil (https://www.wusa9.com/article/news/verify/united-states-produces-more-oil-than-any-other-country-fact-check-russia-impact-on-gas-prices/65-7814c6e2-5437-4201-b021-face477e5462) Despite this drop from 2019's peak, the levels of production in 2021 were unmatched globally. "The United States is the number one oil producer in the world," Weiner said. "We produce more oil and gas than any other country in the...

On Thursday’s broadcast of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” Steve Rattner, who served as counselor to the Treasury Secretary in the Obama administration, stated that there is a bit of “schizophrenia” in our energy policy where “We’ve been discouraging oil companies from maintaining refineries or opening new ones. Because we theoretically are going to transition away from gasoline.” But the problem is, there was a “misjudgment as to how long of a transition it was going to be and what we needed to do to make the transition work.” Rattner stated that “refining capacity has gone down” due to refineries shutting down...