California And Big Oil Are Splitting After Century-Long Affair - Slashdot

Posted by msmash

• ›

  California is the #1 consumer of aviation fuel, the #2 consumer of gasoline and the #2 consumer of natural gas of all states.

  • 3 hidden comments

  • I mean, they have more than 10% of the US population. They probably should be the #1 consumer of everything.

    • Re:

      Well, that math is one way of confirming why American edumucashun has turned into a joke by global standards.

      • Re:

        Oh, so let's add New York state's population to Texas and get 50 million people vs. California's 39 million. Who uses more aviation fuel? Answer, California.

        • Re:

          What point are you making? California is richer than Texas and New York combined?

          • Re:

            California are among the filthiest carbon emssion dirty polluters is the point, and greentard virtue signalling like expelling fossil fuel plants (who will make the product they still guzzle) only hurts the economy and doesn't 'save the planet'

            • Re:

              I am increasingly of the opinion that the Lords & Masters of California have a deliberate, conscious plan to destroy all business (except their own) and drive the middle class out of the state, to reserve it exclusively for the obscenely wealthy and their indentured servants.

              That, or they're all just so batshit crazy and stupid they can't actually detect reality, much less interact with it.

        • Re:

          Let's face it..just another example of the folks in CA being short sighted and stupid.

          While it is an admirable goal to have more renewables....it isn't something that will happen anytime soon in a meaningful way.

          I mean, CA is the state pushing for only EVs in like 2030 or so....yet, I believe just last summer, governor oil slick hair was telling folks to stop plugging their cars into the grid, that it couldn't handle it.

          Anyway....thankfully, the US is a large country, with diverse regions and divers ways

          • Re:

            I live in Florida where the state doesn't care whether you buy an EV or a coal rollin' pickup truck (seriously, there's no vehicle emissions testing here, and no incentives beyond the federal tax credit for buying an EV) and yet we're still #2 right behind California when it comes to the popularity of EVs. #3 is Texas, a state which is also known for its oil production. Source. [energy.gov]

            California might be jumping the gun a little bit by mandating EVs, but they're surprisingly popular even in red states where you'd

            • Re:

              Absolutely! I've been daily-driving an EV for 5+ years now, and it's absolutely more reliable and less hassle on a daily basis than my gasoline powered vehicles are. I mean, especially in recent times? If you're avoiding an EV because of the high up-front cost? You're probably looking at used vehicles, which have higher average mileage on them than ever, thanks to the COVID-induced vehicle production slow-downs and shortages, plus high interest rates putting a damper on new vehicle purchases. So good luck.Y

    • Re:

      not of fossil fuel, if they're going to practice what they preach.

    • Here, let me get some numbers for you....

      According to https://www.eia.gov/state/seds... [eia.gov] California consumed 14.6% of the jet fuel in the US and they only have 11.7% of the US Population.

      • They also have a thriving tourist industry that would have people flying in from not just other states but all around the world.

        • Re:

          Oh, so polluting for rubber-neckers is fine

          • Re:

            Did California fuck your wife or something?

            • Re:

              Grew up  along the Appalachians;   been 20 years since I  left  California.  Whether La or the Central Coast,  never lived in a place where entitlement ran so wide and so deep.
        • Which is the point the other commenters are making: They are profiting as a state from jet-fuel-guzzling activities such as tourism, but at the same time they want to virtue signal that allowing crude oil extraction to produce said jet fuel is "wrong".

          • Re:

            On a semi-related note, most people greatly underestimate how much jet travel affects their CO2 footprint. For example, an A320 flying from New York City to Los Angeles achieves a fuel economy of 97 mpg (US) per seat (see Wikipedia), which sounds good but isn't once you factor in the distances covered. Using our previous example, 2475 miles between those two cities gives us about 25.5 gallons, aka 51 gallons with the return flight, so flying such distances just two times a year (with return) for tourism pur

  • Re:

    They've also made a strange habit of basically encouraging refineries to shut down, discouraging the construction of new refineries, and then blaming said (remaining) refineries shutting down (for needed maintenance) for higher fuel prices and calling it industry greed.

    The disconnect is real.

    https://ktla.com/news/local-ne... [ktla.com]

    "âoeCalifornia has made it very difficult to be a refinery here. In fact, the number of refineries here has fallen by more than half since 1991,â he says. âoeItâ(TM)s

• Summary says "the most populous U.S. state divorces itself from fossil fuels" but the article says it's the other way around.
  After years of spousal abuse Exxon is divorcing California.

  • A convenient excuse to raise oil and gasoline prices and blame it on the Californian government.

    • Re:

      Since that is the specific intent of the California government, yeah, blame where blame is due.

  • Re: The oil companies are divorcing the state

    The companies involved appear to be selling their assets to other oil companies, so.... nothing is changing?

    • Re:

      The majors are explicitly cutting liability ties with the state.

      Kind of like how Verizon sold off all the landline assets to Frontier when they went wireless only.

      So the assets are there, but they're pretty much guaranteed to be stranded due to prevailing public policy. So the people taking them over won't have deep pockets to sue later if California gets unhappy with the arrangement (for whatever reason.)

      So I think divorce is probably a very apt analogy. Cut ties with the crazy person and let someone els

  • Replacements

    There are loads of other places to get oil. California isn't reducing anything other than the money they get from taxing oil extraction.

    • Re:

      California isn't reducing anything other than the money they get from taxing oil extraction.

      
      
      Exactly. Those socialis payments belong in Alaska [wikipedia.org].

• This religious movement has become one where acts of piety and shows of devotion are more important than common sense.

  SOMEBODY ELSE IS GOING TO MAKE AND SHIP THE OIL!!! Somebody dirtier, with less regulation and oversight, and probably filling the coffers of a despot to boot.

  This has become the modern-day equivalent of the march of flagellants - sans chanting... but we at least have the screamers who superglue themselves to the road.

  • • Re:

      Behold, the modern republican party.

  • Re:

    SOMEBODY ELSE IS GOING TO MAKE AND SHIP THE OIL!!! Somebody dirtier, with less regulation and oversight, and probably filling the coffers of a despot to boot.

    So Texas.

• Yes. That's the descriptor I would use to describe California's highways. "Iconic".

  • Re:

    The lowered car culture and worst roads in the country is quite the mix.

    • Re:

      Tell me you haven't driven through South Carolina without telling me you haven't driven through South Carolina.

    • Re:

      The lowered car culture and worst roads in the country is quite the mix.

      
      
      California is third [constructioncoverage.com] for having the worst roads in the nation. New Jersey is second with Rhode Island first. Having been to NJ recently, I can see them being second, if not first. It's been a while since I've been to RI so have no comparison.

  • Re:

    For all the complaining people seem to do about LA's legendary traffic, I was expecting it to be worse than Miami. It's not; Miami is way worse.

  • Traffic Report

    Last time I was in LA driving to Pasadena from Cerritos, the traffic report on KCRW was simply "And now the traffic, all freeways, all directions... slow."

  • Re:

    Highway 101 for instance. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

    • Re:

      Looking at that map, the 101 runs mostly North/South. Except for LA where it runs East/West.

      From wikipedia:
      The east–west geographical alignment of the Ventura Freeway and the north–south designation which appears on the freeway signs can be confusing to visitors; the same freeway entrance can often be signed as "101 North" and "101 West"; this is most common in the San Fernando Valley where the local E/W signing does not match the Caltrans' proper statewide N/S designation.

      In high school I worke

• Champagne corks are popping. The Earth's goddess is saved!

• There's a lot of colourful writing in the article. Judging by the comments, it's achieved the goal it was no doubt meant to.

  California's remaining onshore oil reserves are mostly low-hydrogen hydrocarbons "the consistency of peanut butter." You could describe it as squishy coal as much as thick oil. It's extracted by melting it with injected steam. That makes it energy intensive to extract, which means it's among the most carbon intensive production in the world and some of the more expensive.

  The moratorium on offshore development (not extraction from existing sites) seems to have been instituted in 1969 after an oil spill, both by the state and the US federal government and renewed on many occasions since then. In the federal case, every year since 1982, and by executive order by a certain President HW Bush. So probably not climate change or gay drag queen liberal conspiracy related, unless you could dousing Santa Barbara's beaches with oil "climate change."

  So Exxon and Chevron are selling off expensive, depleted assets in California to other oil companies.

• Here is the rub, Exxon Mobil and Chevron are big companies with deep pockets. These big companies know their liabilities and in recent decades have done a good job on the environmental front. Now, their assets will be sold to people with much smaller bank accounts, and control things from out of state. They will have environmental issues, and they will be slow to respond, and will run into financial trouble fixing the mess. This leaves us worse off, we still get oil production but in a lower quality way.