Iran War Exposes Weakness of California’s ‘Green’ Dependence on Foreign Oil
California is a beacon for smart people. Yet we seem to excel in producing policies that hurt ourselves.
This is particularly clear in the present energy crisis. The showdown in the Strait of Hormuz has raised oil prices worldwide, but it is also unmasking the sheer idiocy of California’s current energy regime.
For more than a decade, California has been waging war on its own fossil fuel industry. Once, the Golden State was a major energy exporter. But regulators, steeped in green religion, have decided that we will eventually drive electric vehicles — and that we will fill our tanks with gas imported from somewhere else in the meantime.
As a result, California is the only state in the Lower 48 that relies on oil and refined petroleum from other parts of the world. Previously, much came from Russia, but now it comes largely from the Persian Gulf.
California is now on the hook to a part of the world that is well known for fanatical anti-Americanism and piratical regimes.
That we pay a premium is obvious, as we have no pipelines from the Middle East, or even from Texas. Our chosen reliance on green energy also has made the state the nation’s largest importer of electricity, and one of the few states that is a net importer of oil and gas.
Once, California accounted for 40% of US oil production. It now accounts for a mere 2% of US oil output, and relies uniquely on foreign supplies for its own needs, including for refined petroleum.
Meanwhile, other parts of the country are getting richer with the price increases. Ships diverted from the Persian Gulf are now headed to the Gulf of Mexico (“Gulf of America,” in Trumpian), but not to the ports of Los Angeles or Oakland.
“North America is now an energy superpower,” suggests industry analyst Robert Bryce. “But California is just screwed in so many ways.”
So amid rising oil prices, we are making sure Bakersfield and Long Beach are not adding to our coffers. It’s boom times again in the Permian Basin, but no celebrations in the former energy-producing parts of California.
All of this has been in service to an ideology that somehow thinks products made using coal (largely from China) are OK, but those made with American — or, even better, California crude — are somewhat evil. We tried to eliminate the demons of oil and gas, well before these fuels are anywhere near losing their importance.
The results of this policy have been disastrous, for both industry and consumers. California gas prices are now around $6 per gallon or higher, 40% above the national average. UC Davis economists expect California will soon be paying $2.50 more per gallon than the average American.
Read the rest of this piece at California Post.
Joel Kotkin is the author of The Coming of Neo-Feudalism: A Warning to the Global Middle Class. He is the Roger Hobbs Presidential Fellow in Urban Futures at Chapman University and and directs the Center for Demographics and Policy there. He is Senior Research Fellow at the Civitas Institute at the University of Texas in Austin. Learn more at joelkotkin.com, follow him on Substack and Twitter @joelkotkin.
Homepage photo: Oil tanker at sea, by Ojas Narappanawar.
