Calif. Politicians’ Attacks on Oil and Gas Are Proving Expensive for Constituents
California’s hostile energy policies have led to the highest prices at the pump in the nation, rolling blackouts, increased foreign imports to keep the state running, and as seen in news this week, made investments in oil and gas production and refining increasingly risky.
Just last month California Attorney General Rob Bonta traveled to COP28 in Dubai to push the state’s climate lawsuit and position the state as a global leader for its policies, but the reality is that while California’s oil and gas industry plans to “continue operating the oil fields and related assets for years to come,” according to E&E News, these policies have made it harder to produce and caused in-state supply to fall woefully short of demand. As the Wall Street Journal editorial board wrote this week, California’s relentless assault on oil and natural gas is costing consumers by making the state “uninvestable” for energy producers:
“California policies have made it ‘riskier than investing in other states, with projects being lower in quality and higher in cost,’ Chevron’s Americas Products business president Andy Walz wrote last month in a filing with the California Energy Commission. ‘Chevron alone has reduced spending in California by hundreds of millions of dollars since 2022.’
“’We have rejected capital projects’ and canceled some ‘due to permitting challenges,’ Mr. Walz noted, adding that California’s ‘arbitrary attacks on a disfavored industry . . . signal to every industry, entrepreneur, manufacturer, and employer that California is closed for business.’” (emphasis added)
Read the full story on EIDClimate.org.
No Comments