California Globe

Governor Gavin Newsom’s call for a special legislative session on December 5 to impose “windfall taxes” on oil companies is nothing but a political stunt and politics at its worst.

If Newsom thinks there is price-gouging, then he should call the session for next week, not after the November 8 election. The delay is simply because he knows California policies are to blame for out-of-control fuel costs.

If Newsom wants to know why gas prices are absurdly high in California, he needs to look in the mirror.

Gas prices are twice as high in California than in Texas and $2.29 more per gallon than the rest of the nation.

In 2019, Newsom asked then California Attorney General Xavier Becerra, to investigate why Californians were paying as much as 30 cents per gallon more than residents of other states. AG Becerra filed a lawsuit against two multinational companies for manipulating the gas market.

To conclude Newsom’s original gas price stunt, AG Becerra admitted that, “the alleged unfair competition practices MAY have resulted in an increase in the price of gas of about 1 cent per gallon.” That’s a penny too much, if it even happened, but it doesn’t explain why Californians are paying dollars more for every gallon of gas than the national average.

In all these political gas price stunts, here is what the California Energy Commission found:

It is more expensive to produce the state’s required gasoline blend, which is not sold in other states. So, when a refinery has maintenance problems or switches to a summer or winter blend, California can’t just import gasoline across state lines. There is also no pipeline of easy transport for oil to California.

In 2017, then Governor Jerry Brown signed Senate Bill 1, which added 12-cents to each gallon of gas to pay for road repairs. Newsom has allowed that tax to go up yearly since he took office. Californians pay 54-cents per gallon of gasoline in state taxes plus 3.7% in state and local taxes.

Then we have the “program costs” that include mandated low-carbon fuel standards and cap-and-trade programs, which have been siphoning $500 million a year to pay for a high-speed train that is $70 billion over budget and years behind schedule. That’s another 43-cents per gallon of gasoline.

In addition to California’s high cost of doing business, once again a product of Newsom and the California State Legislature, refineries in California are not willing to update their plants because Newson is using all of his power to eliminate the industry in California. Newsom just signed legislation prohibiting new or retrofitted oil and gas wells with 3,200 foot setbacks and is working to end the sale of new gas cars by 2035.

California has one of the largest oil reserves in the nation. Yet Newsom and his environmental friends would rather import 1.4 million barrels of oil from other states and foreign countries. Newsom won’t allow state travel to half the states in America but his policies force the state to drink up oil from civil rights nightmare Saudi Arabia and warmongering Russia. It’s nonsensical, hypocritical and expensive.

It is estimated that a very large crude carrier, which transports 2 million barrels of crude oil, takes approximately 60 days to travel to and from Saudi Arabia, emitting 8.2 million pounds of carbon dioxide. That is the equivalent of 808 gasoline-powered vehicles driven for one year or 4.1 million pounds of coal burned.

Finally, how will adding a tax on oil companies reduce gas prices? When a business gets taxed, or Newsom increases the cost of doing business, it gets passed down to the consumer. If gas prices are high, the cost of shipping our food from farms to grocery stores goes up, as does the cost of clothing and other supplies.

Family budgets are already getting crushed by increased inflation and high gas prices. Newsom must stop with the political stunts and provide real solutions and economic relief.