To the editor: Haven’t we all been looking for ways to curb gas prices (“How to bring down gas prices in California (Hint: Pumping oil won’t help),” March 3)? That was my high hope reading this op-ed. But after a couple of explanatory paragraphs, the professor’s expertise devolved to the same tired environmentalist politics: Don’t try to fix what is broken, just drive electric cars, blame the oil companies and let the lawmakers fix it.
Our state sits on some of the world’s largest oil reserves, but as guest contributor Paasha Mahdavi points out, production has decreased since 1986. Isn’t that about when the environmental lobby took control of the state Legislature? Mahdavi criticizes increasing local drilling as a way to increase supply; common sense doesn’t agree. The California Energy Commission reported for 2024 that 23.3% of oil refined to gasoline came from in-state sources, 13.3% from Alaska and 63.5% from foreign sources.
California now has just nine refineries, down from the days when we had more than 40 (back when we had competition-based pricing). Mahdavi ignores the reasons for that decrease, which are well-known if the CEOs of departed oil companies are to be believed: California’s excessive, unrealistic anti-oil industry regulations and laws. Those actions have slowly grown since (aha! coincidence?) 1986 to the recent crescendo.
The “hidden price” quandary lacks some obvious explanations, like everything in California being more expensive, from taxes to rent to transportation to the sundry costs of doing business. Throwing more money and regulations at a new independent state government division will only make those processes murkier, even less likely to create ways to curb gas prices.
Raymond Roth, Oceanside
