California Gas Prices Spike Past $5, Hit $8 in LA

The average price of a gallon of gas in California is now over five bucks. >> As gas prices rise, California is feeling pain at the pump more than any other state in this country. >> In LA County, it’s $5.17. That’s up 17 cents just overnight. >> While the rest of the country is paying around $3.45 for a gallon of gas, AAA says in California it’s more than five bucks, a jump of more than 50 cents in just a week. >> Down in Orange County, $5.15. And in Riverside County, $5.06. >> Just take a look at the prices on this sign. Everything is above $5. >> A unique market that is essentially cut off from the rest of the country.

The state has the highest gas tax in the country, almost 70 cents a gallon. It also requires a cleaner, more expensive fuel blend. >> We stopped by one of the cheapest gas stations we could find, this American Oil in Exposition Park, where drivers could fill up for a little over $4. >> With the permanent shutdown of two major California refineries due to high operating costs and other factors, overall capacity will be reduced about 18%. >> Part of the reason why I have my bike here is cuz it’s cheaper. >> When uncertainty hits global oil markets, gas stations here in Southern California often feel it first.

>> Looking closer at Los Angeles, gas prices jumped 51 cents in just one month, going from $4.48 to $4.99. >> We’ve been >> talking about this forever. The fact that California’s own energy policies, green green energy, getting away from the refineries, it’s created a situation where they have to they have to import most of their their oil and refined gas products. They’ve got their own special blend of herbs and seasons, right? Seasonings. And so, as a result, they can’t just bring in refined gasoline from anywhere. They’ve basically got to do it you know, through various countries that produce it or produce it internally and they’re down to like a handful of refineries.

And we’ve been talking at length about if you have any little disruption in the supply of importing oil, gas, jet fuel, whatever it is to California, those prices are going to go one way and that is a massive spike and that’s exactly what we’re seeing right now with the war in Iran is that what should be domestically produced in California is not because all the refineries are closing down. Now you’ve got Chevron saying they’re going to close another two. You’ve got You’ve got another refinery saying, “Hey, what you guys are proposing, we’re going to shut ours down, too.” It’s just this bloodbath.

And there’s only one way for the prices to go and it’s up. Newsom will blame Trump and his war on Iran for this, but at its core, the reason it’s so much higher than the rest of the country is that you’ve just got a whole bunch of ridiculous policies that aren’t grounded in reality that expose California to situations like this and this isn’t even really a major one. Right? I mean, it’s it’s it’s uh Gulf of Hormuz. Correct, but which carries, you know, 20% of the oil, you know, coming to the United States goes through there, some stat like that. But what you’ve got is you’ve just got a system that is so in California that is so so precariously situated.

If you, you know, it’s like playing that Jenga game. You pull this one, all the whole deck of cards goes down, right? Read the article. Gas prices across SoCal spike as one LA station hits eight bucks a gallon. Oof. That’s That seems kind of high, doesn’t it? That’s That seems a little bit high. Gas prices surged across Southern California this week, shocker. The statewide average climbing above $5 per gallon. Some drivers encountering prices more than $8 at the pump. You know how you see these stories, you’re like, “Eight bucks? What are they doing? Just absolute piracy?” Yes. It’s in downtown LA.

There’s no other gas stations around. Hey, let’s just go and see if we can bump it up three bucks a gallon above, you know, what anybody else would pay. And if you’re stuck in downtown LA and you’ve got little gas in your car, you’re going to put a couple of bucks in at eight bucks just to get you to where it’s cheaper, right? That’s what you’re going to do. That’s what you’ve got going on here. So, within just a blink of the eye, snap of the fingers, we’re in a situation, eight bucks a gallon. So, that kind of tells you literally how precarious, how Jenga California’s set up, right? National average has risen nearly 50 cents a week in the week since the war in the Iran began.

Organizations said prices were already trending upward because we’ve got the typical seasonal patterns when when when this happened. You’ve got the switchover from the winter blend to the summer blend. And remember, California’s got its own blend, right? Because they’re so green. You guys are so green in California. And it just costs you. And so, you can’t import completed gasoline to California without this special without this special blend having been been done by somebody in Asia or the California refineries. And guess what? California refineries, there’s hardly any left. There are literally hardly any left cuz they can’t make a living.

They can’t make a go of it. They can’t make a profit to present to their shareholders. In fact, Valero just spent a billion dollars shutting down the Benicia refinery. A billion dollars. They said, “Yep, we’re going to sink a billion dollars into this bad boy. We’re going to turn it off.” And guess what, California? You know, that’s literally what they did. They just went, “Go off yourselves. We’re not doing business here. You guys suck. We’re taking our toys and we’re we’re getting out.” So, I mean, I drive Uber and I’m just getting killed right now. Guy talking about it. I mean, gas prices are just so high.

They were high before the war. They were climbing, right? They went down, down, down during winter. And then all of a sudden started going back up. Now you got the seasonal thing. Got daylight savings time. Uh, that’s painful. Average price of a gallon of gas in California now over five bucks. It’s gone over five bucks here in W Washington. My son sent me a picture from uh Capitol Hill. Top of Capitol Hill. Uh, it’s just nasty up there. And uh gas there was I think 549. It’s another one of those gas stations like this eight buck one, right? So, LA County it’s reached 517. A 17-cent jump overnight.

You go to bed five bucks a gallon, wake up next morning 517. Uh, hello. Good morning. Good morning, Los Angeles County. Prices stand at 515 in Orange County, 506 in Riverside County. So, what’s it going to take for this to go to, you know, across the board eight bucks a gallon? A situation like you’ve got right here. Where you’ve got the Strait of Hormuz. If if if that continues to be constricted, they’re going to restrict your ability to bring in all those imports because domestically California can’t do it. Do not have the capacity to do it, and they have exposed themselves with Newsom’s just terrible, terrible policy finding refineries millions and millions of dollars, making a situation where they can’t make a profit.

And they’re they’re just basically, “Yep, we’re out. We’re done.” And that’s what they’re doing. And they’re sending letters, literally, right now, last week, two of my podcasts were um two different refineries, including Chevron, said, “Ah, you know, with what you guys are proposing here, we can’t make a go of this. So, you know, we’re going to be out as well.” Hopefully, something happens about it. This is the uh the driver. I really can’t do nothing but complain. That is true. That is correct. But, you voted for Gavin Newsom. He’s the guy that’s been in couple of different you know, tenures, and this is what happens.

This is what happens. It goes to the moon. Gas goes to the moon when you have restricted the ability to domestically produce what you should be able to. California has the fifth largest oil reserves in the country at like 1.8 billion gallon reservoirs. 1.8 billion. And they’re not hardly ever producing any because, “Oh, we need to have clean energy.” Well, we’re not really doing that. Everybody’s got to still fill up with the pump. This whole notion that we’re all going to, you know, walk around in snowshoes and drive electric cars, that’s just not really a thing, right? It’s not really a thing.

Everybody’s got to go and and you see memes of people complaining saying, “What can I do about it? All I can do is complain cuz I got to put gas in my car. Got to get from point A to point B.” And guess what? Not everybody, very few people, in fact, are driving an electric car. So, what this is is this is a massive massive regressive tax on those who can least afford it. People on the lower socioeconomic rungs. Making the least amount of money. Cuz if if you’re making 15 bucks an hour, whatever it is, and gas goes to eight bucks a gallon, two bucks, there’s your hour. Mhm. That’s painful. Painful.

Just a few miles away, however, Chevron station in downtown LA was charging $8.21 a gallon, leaving some drivers stunned. Well, so that’s that’s the point of this podcast is when we get to 821 across the board, and I think we get there on this run, I think we could get there. We have sustained war for not that much longer. Yeah, that gives that the extra extra boost. Because now you’ve got the more expensive product coming online, and your summer gas to to everywhere, right? Everybody switches over from winter blend to summer blend. You’ve got that on top of you’ve got greater demand for driving in summer.

Kids get out of school, people want to drive, people do road trips, weather is better, people are out driving. Demand for gasoline goes up, and you’ve already constricted that supply so greatly. That’s what we’re talking about. It’s insane insane work. It’s too high. I definitely won’t be coming here for that, driver Denise Rodriguez said. Matthew Jozwiak, visiting from New York, added, I just actually could not believe my eyes when I saw that $8 is wild. Okay? But people have been saying that about five bucks as well. We’ve We’ve surpassed $5 here. I was in Oklahoma and Texas three weekends ago, two weekends ago, something like that.

And gas was still still had a two in front of it. I think it was 229 in Oklahoma and 269 in Dallas-Fort Worth area on average. So, to go from two something to eight bucks a gallon, man, that is nutso, right? Experts note that California’s regulatory policies and reduced in-state gasoline production are also contributing to the spike. Really? No kidding. Huh. You know, Newsom’s just going to blame this all on the Iran war. And that um this is all this is Trump’s fault. This is Trump’s fault. He’s going to be pushing for those Remember those stickers we had where there was Biden and you’d point it to the cost of the dollar per gallon and he’d have that big cheesy grin.

He’d go, “I did that. I did that.” in his dementia state. Those were great, weren’t they? That was funny. So, here we go. Here’s some of that backstory, super quick. California gas could hit hit $8.43 as refineries go dark. And one of the prefaces was if you have a little bit of a interruption with any of the importation required because California can no longer domestically produce what they need, then you’re going to have gas prices go to the moon. And $8.43 was one of the pinpoints that Professor Michaud uh at the University of Southern California came up with. And he had all of this math and all these these uh equations that kind of came up with that.

And that’s that’s one of the things that he came up with. He’s like, “Eight mid-eight bucks.” Michaud’s conclusion, $8.43 per gallon is not a worst-case fantasy. It’s a foreseeable outcome if refinery closures continue or if you have something in the supply chain importing gas or you know, any number things. You know, something with the dock in Los Angeles. Something with the dock where all the the oil ships pile in and and jump off their their oil, gas, what whatever it is. Um you have something like that? Can’t bring it in? I mean, we are literally California is literally importing gasoline from the Bahamas via Texas.

Texas, Bahamas, Panama Canal, West Coast, Best Coast. It’s it’s absolute insanity. But that’s because the whole green deal is insanity. It’s not based on reality. You don’t have an economy that can work off of electricity alone, electric cars alone. It’s just not a thing. It’s not there. We’re not even close to that. And that’s what we’re seeing is demand for for oil products in general, gasoline. And that’s going to spike everything in California because gas goes into everything. Gas, diesel, whatever you want to call it, goes into everything. And that’s not even And we start talking about security, start talking about the exposure from a from a war standpoint of if you don’t have the ability to support your own troops with fuel for the jet fighters, you’re host.

And that’s where we kind of sit. A lot of folks think that we need to have bent federal intervention because California has made such bad decisions, such terrible energy decisions that forced refineries to close down. A chain reaction of closures. Yeah, we’ve got Chevron headquarters Bay Area to Houston, Phillips 66 closed, Valero Benicia refinery closed. According to Ariza, who I’ve had on the podcast, Mike Ariza, Valero canceled its crude oil contracts more than 6 weeks ago, signaling an earlier shutdown long before it became public. And we did the podcast on that indicating, well, that is done.

So, California, yet again, is forced to to import more of their their supply. Valero alone took a $1.1 billion write-off tied to California refinery assets, citing low margins, soaring compliance costs, and a hostile regulatory climate. This is what is causing California, specifically, to have such expensive gasoline. That’s going to impact Nevada. They import 88% of their gas from California. It’s also going to impact Arizona. They import a bunch of gas from California, too. Now, California is importing 63% of their fuel from outside, from other players who shall remain anonymous? No, everybody knows.

Imports can’t replace lost capacity. That’s the big deal. Yeah, here we go. 88% of Nevada’s fuel supply originates in the state of California. When you lose refining capacity, you don’t get it back, Professor Michaux warned. Imports are more expensive, less reliable, and exposed to global disruptions. Huh. What do you think the Iran war is here? Yeah. It’s a global disruption, isn’t it? It’s a global disruption. We are watching this happen in real time. Recent report authored by Samyn and Stan Alice, who we’ve had on this show, Professor Michaux, and Arriza, Mycorrhiza, warns that the collapse of California’s refining sector also poses a national security risk, threatening fuel availability for US military bases on the West Coast, and increasing dependence on foreign energy sources, including adversaries like China and Russia.

Is this a shocker that we’re at eight bucks a gallon? No. This is reality. This is cause and effect. This is what happens when you have decades of mentally challenged policy on energy, on oil, on gas, on you name it. Just hey, yeah, we’re so green, we’re so clean. And yet 98% of all the plastic, you know, that gets recycled in California goes right in the dump. It’s some ridiculous number like that, right? So, is this a shocker? No. California, what can you do? Hey, maybe you were a vote you maybe you vote for a Republican for once. But I don’t know, could happen. Last time you had one was 2006, 20 years later?

Gavin Newsom has not done you any favors at all. But you keep voting progressive because you just look around and go, “Everybody else is. This should be great, greatest thing ever.” No. You need to get somebody in there that has a um little different outlook on how this should go. Because Californians, you guys are going to suffer the most. Washington state, same thing. We’ve got this absolute insanity, the climate the climate commitment act, which puts a massive massive premium on our gasoline because it’s so expensive for our refineries to to refine it and and give us the gas products that we need.

Whether it’s diesel, whether it’s you know, plane fuel, whether it’s whatever. Right? We don’t have the ability to do that without great expense. And so, the refineries just pass it on to us as consumers. So, Washington state, California, Hawaii, consistently consistently highest gas prices in the United States. And a lot of that is based on policy. This is just straight up due to policy. And it’s not necessarily the Iran war. That doesn’t help, but could have been any number of factors, any number of things happen, which happen consistently. You have a refinery go down. You have a refinery catch fire.

You have the docks, the fuel docks at docks where they dump off oil. products, whatever it is in Los Angeles. Something happens there. Don’t have the ability to do that. You’ve got, you know, straight up armoos. You’ve you’ve got changes. You’ve got stuff that is impacted. You’ve got that cause and effect that is literally happened. Now we’re seeing eight bucks a gallon in Los Angeles. Who would have thought? A lot of people did. A lot of people predicted it. You know what everybody else did? That’ll never happen. Well, here we are. We’re going to keep going on this cuz it’s going to get worse before it gets better.

Make sure you’re subscribed. Hit that notification bell. I’ll see you in the next episode. Thanks for being here. Bye for now.