Reason #33 Why I Love To Blog -- April 6, 2015

The other day a reader pointed out that California's "green" policies are exacerbating the drought that state residents are now experiencing.

Today, the WSJ has an op-ed that supports that contention:

During normal years, the state should replenish reservoirs. However, environmental regulations require that about 4.4 million acre-feet of water—enough to sustain 4.4 million families and irrigate one million acres of farmland—be diverted to ecological purposes.

Even in dry years, hundreds of thousands of acre feet of runoff are flushed into San Francisco Bay to protect fish in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta.

During the last two winters amid the drought, regulators let more than 2.6 million acre-feet out into the bay.

The reason: California lacked storage capacity north of the delta, and environmental rules restrict water pumping to reservoirs south. After heavy rains doused northern California this February, the State Water Resources Control Board dissipated tens of thousands of more acre-feet. Every smelt matters.

Increased surface storage would give regulators more latitude to conserve water during heavy storm-flows and would have allowed the state to stockpile larger reserves during the 15 years that preceded the last drought. Yet no major water infrastructure project has been completed in California since the 1960s.

Money is not the obstacle. Since 2000 voters have approved five bonds authorizing $22 billion in spending for water improvements. Environmental projects have been the biggest winners. In 2008 the legislature established a “Strategic Growth Council” to steer some bond proceeds to affordable housing and “sustainable land use” (e.g., reduced carbon emissions and suburban sprawl).

Have You Ever Seen The Rain, CCR

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Pricing: Sanctions? What Sanctions?

For the archives. Bloomberg says this was posted "16 minutes ago," when I posted the link, but almost the very same story was posted yesterday. In fact, I thought I had read the very same story a month ago. It turns out the stories are similar: for the second month in a row, Saudi Arabia has increased the price of its oil it sells to China. By ten cents. Yes, ten cents.

Whatever. 

The Iranian "deal" will have little affect on the crude oil market.

There are bigger impacts:

Despite the sanctions, China's imports from [Iran] are set to rise from August as a Chinese state trader has signed a deal with the National Iranian Oil Company to buy more condensate.

Concerns over fighting in Yemen also supported prices, as fighting between a Saudi-backed coalition and Shi'ite Houthi forces continued in the port city of Aden, which overlooks a major shipping lane between Europe and the Arab Gulf.