What is striking about passage of Gov. Gavin Newsom’s Law to Punish

Great oils

Allegedly, greed is the sea change it represents in California policy.

A century ago and well after World War II, the oil industry could do no wrong in California. It was encouraged to drill, baby, drill. And this nascent state reaped the economic benefits.

In fact, California is still the only major oil

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producing state that does not impose an extraction tax for pumping the goo out of the ground. Oil companies do pay wealth tax on underground reserves. But it’s a much lighter hit than an extraction load.

In 2006, voters rejected a ballot measure that would have taxed extraction and raised $1 billion annually. The oil industry launched a $95 million opposition campaign. Three years later, the legislature passed an extraction tax, but Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger vetoed it.

Now the governor of California is swearing at greedy oil companies cheating motorists and gutting Californians to line their own pockets.

The bill Newsom signed last week empowers the California Energy Commission, which he appoints to regulate oil refinery profits. It can set a profit cap and punish refiners that exceed it with what it calls a price-gouging fine.

This governor brags about bringing Big Oil to its knees.

Newsom’s contempt for the Democratic-dominated legislature contrasts sharply with the welcoming cheers the oil industry heard from Sacramento for most of the 20th century.

C

company.

Only one Democratic legislator voted against Newsom’s bill, and she was promptly chastised by Speaker of the Assembly Anthony Rendon (D-Lakewood). New mounting

member woman

Jasmeet Bains presumably represented the views of her oil-rich Kern County districts in opposing the measure. The speaker then snatched her from the influential Business and Professions Committee.

That wouldn’t have happened with an anti-oil bill in the past.

But these days, bashing and voting against the oil industry apparently plays well with Democratic voters in deep blue California.

First, people are concerned about climate change and greenhouse gas emissions emitted by gasoline cars.

In a poll last year by the Public Policy Institute of California, about half of those surveyed said they’d considered buying an electric car. And by 3 to 1, they prioritized developing alternative energy wind, solar, hydrogen over expanding oil and gas production.

Second, there is more public fear of actions by oil companies directly affecting motorists. We paid much more than the national average for a gallon of gasoline at one point last year, $2.61 more, when our costs at the pump were more than $6.

Compare that to the 25 or so cents I initially paid for a gallon of gasoline in the 1950s, when oil was a welcome job producer in California.

Part of the difference between what we pay and the rest of the country is due to state and local taxes. There are also fees to fund environmental programs, usually to combat climate change. And there is the cost of mixing a special anti-smog mixture of fuel.

But those costs do not explain all the extra price at the pump. Now the Energy Commission will have the legal authority to dig into refinery books and uncover the mystery.

And maybe it can find out why just

before before

every three day weekend especially during high season

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traveled summer months the pump price suddenly escalates. But I think we already know that answer: Oil companies can get away with it because we have to fill up.

Oil used to play a big role in California’s development and driving workers toward the center

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class.

In 1903, California became the No. 1 oil-producing state in the nation. We traded that position back

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other

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on through Oklahoma until the Great Depression, when there was a glut because people didn’t drive as much. Oil production slowed and then escalated again during World War II, but today was only the seventh

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largest producer of crude oil.

In the 1920s, much of the Los Angeles Basin was covered by a forest of wooden oil derricks. Many of us still remember an active oil well on the Beverly Hills High School campus. Derricks spread out over the Summerland Beach area just south of Santa Barbara.

California pumped 36% of the country’s oil in 1923. Today, 100 years later, that is only 3%. Those in power can hardly wait, it seems to release the state from its remaining production.

My own family has directly experienced the dramatic change in government policies and attitudes towards oil.

My father left his family’s depressed Tennessee ranch in the 1920s because he heard there were decent paying jobs in California’s booming oil fields. There were.

A large Skelton clan came with him, his father, brother, two uncles and several cousins. Most went back to farming in Tennessee as oil companies laid off workers during the

i.e

Depression. Fortunately, my father stayed and I was born in beautiful Santa Barbara.

With only one eighth

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primary education there was no secondary school near his remote farm

i.e

Father supported a family on the wages of oil workers, rising through the ranks from roustabout to tool driver and eventually assistant foreman at Shell’s Ventura lease. We were proud of him.

I even became an oil worker my first summer out of high school. But I took a 33% pay cut to work for the Ventura Star-Free Press the following summer. My best investment ever.

I’ve been through my own oil evolution from strong support for offshore drilling to adamant opposition over repeated, catastrophic spills.

Today, one of my father’s granddaughters, my daughter, is trying to rid California and the world of fossil fuel because, according to her, it threatens to destroy the planet. She would like to end her grandfather’s profession.

She is a Biden administration consultant trying to find a clean

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energy pathways for fossil

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fuel workers.

Dad probably would have been okay with that, but warned her not to be rambunctious. Gas powered cars will be around for a while yet.