Originally posted by: Kevin Lewis
There was no "prevention." The companies that own those refineries were given five years--very generous advance notice --to comply with upgrade regulations. Most of it had to do with pollution control, which despite literally six decades of Republican yeeping, is and always has been a major concern in California due to urban density, climate patterns, and topography. L.A. would be as bad as Beijing if Republicans had had their way. Ronny Raygun in particular was opposed to pollution controls, even though he had always lived nearby and should have known better.
California isn't shutting down those refineries that Tom has now made 750 posts about. Their owners are shutting them down because they don't want to modernize. That may be a prudent fiscal decision in their eyes. After all:
1. Trump's tanking of the economy has weakened demand for fossil fuel products.
2. When the Turd croaks, Canadian Trumpiffs will die out--even under Cat Eater--thus giving us access once again to cheap fossil fuels, which Trump's hate campaign notwithstanding, they'd much rather ship across the border than pipe it to the coast and load it on tankers.
You are really inferring a lot from my post that just wasn't there.
Nowhere in my post did I say California was exclusively responsible for shutting down the refineries.
I said I think we need more new modern refineries. (New modernized refineries are more efficient and environmentally friendly)
I said it doesn't make sense for people to prevent new refineries from being built. (The word people doesn't mean just government. It includes regulators, politicians, voters, nonvoters, business managers, investors etc.) There are indeed a lot of people blocking new refineries from being built for a lot of different reasons.
I also said that the need for new refineries is even greater when people are going to shut down old refineries. (people are indeed shutting down old refineries. Examples of the people shutting down old refineries are politicians, regulators, voters, nonvoters, business managers and investors) Old refineries are shutting down for all sorts of reasons. Sometimes they are too old and expensive to maintain. Sometimes they are too expensive to retrofit to newer environmental standards. There are a lot of reasons.
To bring down the price of gasoline at the pump we need more refinery capacity. Cheaper oil isn't the only way. That was the point of my post.
I'm not sure where in my post I said this was exclusively the fault of the state of California's government.
Nowhere in my post did I mention any sort of partisan politics.
