The ongoing heat wave is raising the risk of blackouts on top of perennial drought and fires. And now, after enduring record pump prices in June that were much higher than the national average, Californians face surging gasoline costs again at the end of the summer travel season when they typically fall.
Thank you for reading this post, don't forget to subscribe!Pump prices jumped 10 cents a gallon in a week in Los Angeles County and the Inland Empire and 13 cents in Orange County, according to auto club AAA. Record wholesale premiums signal they could rise even further. At the state level, retail prices average $5.34 a gallon on Friday, 4 cents more than the previous day.
The confluence of bad news highlights how vulnerable California’s energy systems are to supply disruptions. The state is an energy island, cut off from crude and fuel hubs in the Gulf Coast and Midwest by the Rocky Mountains. Regulators require a boutique grade of cleaner-burning fuel that few refineries are geared to produce outside of the state. As a result, fuel shortages take time to resolve and price spikes are far more common than elsewhere in the country.
Gasoline stockpiles on the US West Coast have fallen by 11% since the beginning of August amid a lack of imports to their lowest level in about seven years, data from the Energy Information Administration show. The California grade of gasoline known as Carbob also saw inventories drop to 8% below the five-year average for this time of year, according to the California Energy Commission.
Refiners in the state are running harder, but hot weather and a stressed power grid may be causing some problems. Excess heat challenges the water cooling system in refineries, and one way to handle it is to cut operation rates, said John Auers, managing director at RBN Energy.
“Heat, along with the way the power grid is being managed, can be contributing to the refinery issues,” Auers said in a phone interview. A string of incidents recently surfaced in Southern California and may have spooked traders in the spot market, which sets the basis for retail prices.
The historic level of success of any civilization has been the cost of energy and transportation.
The lower the costs, and the ease of access to low cost transportation (goods, services, personal) the grater the level of existence of society.
Remember unless there is a complete collapse the very wealthy will survive. It is the rest of us that will not.
Not a problem. The voters prefer poverty, corruption and, social rot. It’s what they voted for.