I'm a bit perplexed on this one-- Yes, we refine our own blend of gasoline, but it's based on market oil -- nothing about the war we started with Iran impacts our domestic refining capability.
Also, oil takes longer to get from Iran to the west coast than to the east coast. Shouldn't the east coast be the first to notice decreased shipments, because the west coast essentially has a stock still in transit for longer?
EDIT: Nevermind, now I see that 25% of CA gas is refined overseas.
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
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.
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?
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.
> 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.
"California’s top foreign refinery supplier of gasoline and blendstocks this decade is Reliance Industries Ltd.’s Jamnagar refinery complex in western India. "
"More than 9 million barrels arrived via this loophole in 2025"
Now, that's a tiny fraction of the 320M barrels of gas used in CA annually, but anything that affects global oil shipments will be felt in California.
> [California] imports about 60% of its crude from overseas--up from 5% in the mid-1980s- about a third of which comes from the
Middle East. About 15% of the state's refined fuels are also imported, much of which depends on Middle East crude.
15% in absolute terms, 22% in per capita terms. And it is state policy to allow no more additional ICE cars in less than ten years, no net emissions in less than 20 years. Investing in a refinery today would obviously be folly.
I'm not well-versed in "cost disease", but yes, standards go up. Cars have to have airbags and backup cameras and infernal electronic nannies. So an (alleged) increase in safety has been mandated, and the costs are obligatory. IOW, your risk of dying in a car goes down, but it doesn't come for free.
Medical care is getting better, insurance is required to pay for more and more things, but that drives up insurance costs.
In my county, fire sprinklers are required in all new houses.
Costs go up, but at least, in theory, you're getting something in return.
You're welcome to blame the state. Without those actions, things would be somewhat more affordable. But it seems pretty clear from the data on inequality that inequality is a much bigger factor in bidding up living costs than the fact that I need to install sprinklers in my house, even if sprinklers are a very large cost relative to my income.
Holy crap the scrolling behavior on this site is the worst I've seen. It hijacks my browser (Chrome)+OS X trackpad scrolling speed and inertia in a horrible way.
I think the FIRE crowd is even more likely to fall into this trap than the average wage slave. In addition to finding meaning in their day job, they're also more likely to forego short-term costs (like recreation/socialization/travel/whatever). Plus the FIRE planning itself becomes a hobby. So when they retire, they "lose" even more than the average person who might have more side interests.
I really appreciate that perspective. There’s definitely an aspect of FIRE people being more inclined to sacrifice short-term meaning in order to retire earlier, that may contribute to not having spent time actually building the life they were wanting to live free of work in the first place. And it’s a great insight that FIRE itself is in many ways a hobby, and one that you somewhat inherently “lose” once you actually go through with it.
What we've lost in social media just makes me so sad. I hate that reels/stories have become the "new" way of sharing things (over the past 10 years).
I took a trip to Yosemite last weekend and took the (rare) opportunity to post a reel. All of the comments and reactions are DMs. It feels so lonely and weird and isolating. Who asked for this?
I miss the days where you shared things, and people actually commented on them and interacted with each other as well as the poster. And where it wasn't ephemeral.
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