Pay to Play

[DEVOREFLYER]

Well ya got to PAY to PLAY. Filled up the toys yesterday $250+ (truck 25 gal, boat 33 gal). Ya just got to love California gas prices. My son in Texas and my buddy's in Montana and South Carolina are all paying $1.00 or more LESS per gal and we will have the gas tax raised here July 1st.

http://i.imgur.com/c3LXBTO.jpg

[BALLERONBUDGET]

Yup ... I went to costco gas awhile back and debit card transactions hv $99 limit then it shuts off!
Makes u stop put back and restart all over again! Haha did it a few times to top off SUV n boat tanks....hell u don't wanna wait behind me go to another line!! U also forgot to add in Launch fees grub n suds ..easy $300 days for Cali fun

[DEVOREFLYER]

ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

Published: April 24, 2014 Updated: 5:37 p.m.

California motorists are to be forgiven for not celebrating this week the end of 19 straight days of higher gasoline prices. After all, it’s not like pump prices have returned to where they were when the streak started this month, some 24.2 cents a gallon ago.

With the recent run-up in gas prices, to the highest level since March 1, 2013, California has earned the ignominious distinction of having the highest average fuel price in the lower 48 states.

The price shock is attributed to the usual supply-side causes: Problems at certain of the state’s refineries. An international crisis – in this case, Ukraine – has fomented marketplace fears that have driven up the cost of the foreign oil California imports. And even – wait for it – last week’s “blood moon.”

But the escalation in gas prices that are an annual (if not twice- or thrice-annual) occurrence here in the Golden State are almost entirely the result of public policy dictated by lawmakers and regulators in Sacramento.

Indeed, every year at this time refineries in the state switch over to higher-price oxygenated fuel – made with ethanol – as mandated by state air quality regulations. It so happens that ethanol prices are higher than normal this year because of subpar corn production in the Midwest.

Meanwhile, because California discourages in-state oil exploration and development, it imports more than half its oil from overseas. So Thursday’s increase in oil futures to nearly $102 per barrel (which the Associated Press attributed to market “worries about tension in Ukraine” and Marketwatch also attributed to rebel control of several Libyan oil ports) put upward pressure on oil prices.

The irony of California’s gasoline market is that there is hardly any other place in the world that has such sky-high pump prices that has so much refinable oil just waiting to be tapped.

In fact, the U.S. Energy Oil Administration estimates that the Monterey Shale formation beneath the San Joaquin Valley has some 15.4 billion barrel’s worth of oil, which is roughly equivalent to two-thirds of the nation’s entire shale oil reserve.

The only thing stopping California from taking advantage of that natural resource is the politically driven opposition of activist groups determined to stop fracking not only in San Joaquin Valley, but throughout the state.

And even if anti-fracking groups went away, even if the state’s oil industry got the green light to start extracting oil from the Monterey Shale formation, California wouldn’t have sufficient refinery capacity to convert the oil into gasoline and other petroleum products.

That’s because lawmakers and regulators in Sacramento haven’t allowed any new oil refinery to be built in California since 1979 (which resulted in a 20 percent reduction in refining capacity from 1985-95).

As to the state’s ethanol mandate, it was based on bad science. Just this week, in fact, a study published in the journal Nature Climate Change found that ethanol actually creates more greenhouse gas emissions than does gasoline.
So the higher prices California motorists have been paying for supposedly “cleaner” ethanol fuel is all for naught.