People in LA need to breathe during the summer time. So yes we demand a blend that protects our residents. And the refiners are choosing to close refineries. They are not being compelled.

They are being strangled, it’s their choice to tap out is how I would put it.

The improvement in air quality is due to the clean air act, catalytic converters, and the shuttering of industry, the gas blend plays a minor part. Even then, with gas so much higher it will materially make peoples lives worse, at some point society would be better off getting rid of the blend.

Yeah, I remember flying into LAX in the late 80s and early 90s. Smog so thick it looked like a physical obstacle.

Whatever they're doing seems to be working nicely.

Car emissions are far lower now. I lived in CA when the air was grey in July.

That ended a long time ago. A modern Honda generates something like 1% as much pollution as a car from the eighties.

> CA’s requirement that it gets its own blend of gas is combined with how its openly hostile towards its ever decreasing refineries and that it is impossible for a new refinery to ever open makes it’s supplies absurdly limited

A big one is a lack of pipelines.

As I understand it, California sits on so much oil, nobody has built a pipeline.

Building an energy pipeline in California is like bringing sand to the beach. The energy is already there.

There are plenty of crude oil and refined product pipelines in California.

For example crude oil is produced mid state in the San Joaquin valley and pumped by pipeline to the Bay Area and LA refineries.

Refined product from LA is delivered by pipeline from LA refineries as far east as Phoenix and up to Las Vegas.

Building new pipelines in California though is…challenging.

It's bonkers that some of the most expensive gas you'll ever buy is in SF, and Martinez is right there. You could bike there, if they allowed bikes on the bridge.

I paid the equivalent of $12.50 a gallon for diesel at the peak price a month or so ago.

California learned that lesson the hard way. Have you been in the city during a bad smog day?

Everyone loves gas and hates refineries. It's a tough choice.

There has been no major refineries opened in the US since 1977. There have been a handful of small refineries in the 2010s and early 2020s in California, North Dakota, and Texas.

How do you know California's lack of new refineries is due to California hostility rather than being due to whatever caused the same lack in every other state?