Californians: You Made Your Own Bed Of Gasoline Shortages

California, in your zeal to have the cleanest gasoline in the country, you isolated yourselves from all the less-clean supplies that the rest of us enjoy throughout the United States.  Your shortages and high gasoline prices are of your own making.  All it took was two major, plant-shutting-down accidents at two very critical refineries -- refineries dedicated to making your state's very stringent blends of summer gasoline -- to send your Golden State into serious supply shortages.  Now you whine.  Like Kermit The Frog once sang: "It's not easy being green".  So, accept your fate.

U.S. Senator Diane Feinstein is calling for an investigation.   This is so typical of all Democrats: Eager to imply that any shortages are due to price manipulation by the big oil companies when, of course, the real blame goes to the Democrats of the California State legislature who mandated cleaner fuels than the rest of the U.S..  California only has 21 operating refineries; working full-time to meet the state's high EPA standards.  Take at least 10% of them offline and, you wind up with serious shortages; especially if those refineries were high output plants (see note below).  And, the refineries in other states can't help you out because their blends are illegal for sale in California. So, get over it.  You voted for "greener" fuel standards and you got them.

Note: Capacities of the two refineries that were shut down. The Richmond Chevron Refinery processes 240,000 barrels of oil per day. That is 12% of the nearly 2 million barrels of oil that are processed daily in California.  Exxon-Mobil's Torrance facility produces nearly 10% of California's gasoline.  So, in effect, those two plants produced 22% of all the gasoline in California.

References:

--- L.A. Times: Gassing Up Conspiracy Theories In California: http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/editorials/la-ed-gasoline-20121009,0,7222847.story

--- U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA): California Refining Statistics: http://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/pet_pnp_cap1_dcu_sca_a.htm

--- Wikipedia: Chevron's Richmond Ca. Refinery: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chevron_Richmond_Refinery

--- Exxon-Mobil: About the Torrance Refinery: http://www.exxonmobil.com/NA-English/PA/about_where_ref_torrance.aspx