With the U.S. economy showing increasingly clear signs of recovery, and gas prices falling, one state has decided to go the other way ... Gavin Newsom's California.
According to KCRA:
SACRAMENTO, Calif. —
California may be on the verge of a gas price crisis, with experts warning that soaring costs could occur if the state's largest refineries shutter operations.
According to analysis by Michael Mische, a USC professor, the impending closures of the Phillips 66 refinery in Los Angeles and the Valero facility in Northern California could lead to a staggering 21% drop in refining capacity over the next three years.
Mische warns that such disruptions could drive prices at the pump to $8 per gallon or higher.
"There's no incentive for refineries to stay in California," Mische said.
Decades of demonizing oil production, in one of the nation's biggest oil states, which, given its resources is capable of supplying all the nation's gas at the pumps if it wants to, will do that.
So will decades of socialist rule.
As Milton Friedman once said:
If you put the federal government in charge of the Sahara Desert, in 5 years there'd be a shortage of sand.
California is Exhibit A.
Steve Hilton, a popular Fox News commentator who is now running for governor, put out this tweet showing how sorry the picture is:
California has huge oil reserves and a great energy industry (being crushed by Newsom) yet our gas prices are much higher than HAWAII, with no oil reserves, in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.
— steve hilton (@SteveHiltonx) May 9, 2025
This destructive Democrat insanity has to end!
Gas prices as of May 5th (@AAAnews): https://t.co/UQxh5JVsHD pic.twitter.com/o2BHP0quWK
Newsom is responding in the Leonid Brezhnev way, by denying there is a problem, and attacking the messenger.
According to KTLA:
... Newsom’s office claimed that Mische is “bankrolled by Saudi Arabia” and utilized the scientific method of “guessing.”
In a statement to KTLA, Mische admits to working for Saudi Arabia but said his work was related to a project called Vision 2030.
Who cares if he worked for Saudi Arabia?
And more important, why would the Saudis have an interest in California stepping up its domestic production as opposed to buying theirs from abroad at higher prices?
The bottom line here is whether what he is saying is true, and a back-of-the-envelope calculation indicates that the loss of multiple refineries, which are either shutting down or fleeing the state, is going to have an impact on what's available at the pump, particularly with California's excessive greenie requirements for its various blends.
What will happen here is that prices will go up, the economy will stagnate, locals will flee -- and the rest of the country will sail along on a much better business model of lower gas prices which will lower prices through the economy.
California will be the sorry outlier.
And this guy wants to bring his model of governance to the rest of the country as president.
Image: Amit Patel, via Flickr // CC BY 2.0 Deed