Blame Game: California Refiners Blame Others For High Gasoline Prices; From Denver, The Kennedy Clan Can Head To Cheyenne -- December 16, 2016

Updates

December 17, 2015: Wow! After the Kennedy clan leaves Denver, and then after departing Cheyenne, they can complete their western Ski Swing by heading up to Mount Baker outside of Seattle, WA. Tweeting now, these two tweets:

• Mt. Baker snow depth 80". Same time last year, it was 6". Could be triple digit by the weekend.  
• If models are correct, nearly every western WA mountain snowfall reporting location could have over 100% of normal snowfall by weekend.

Original Post 

The blame game:  Oil refiners blame California regulations, import issues and refinery closure for high gas prices. The Los Angeles Times is reporting:

California's stubbornly high gasoline prices in 2015 resulted from state regulations, trouble with imports and an outage at a major refinery.

Speaking to the state Petroleum Market Advisory Committee for the first time since expensive California gasoline brought huge profits to oil refineries this year, the Western States Petroleum Assn. said the unusually large gap between the state's average price for a gallon of regular gas and the national average involved matters out of the oil refinery industry's control.

Imports not sufficient:

No tankers were available in the Gulf Coast to bring fuel to California. Better deals were available to suppliers such as India, as global demand for gasoline this year has soared.

Regulations:

The average gas prices in California typically runs higher than the average for the rest of the nation because of the unique blend of environmentally friendly gas as well as state taxes and fees.

But this year, the gap was unusually wide, with the state average as much as 75 cents a gallon more than the national average. In the Los Angeles area, the gap was even greater — as much as $1.50 higher.

The refinery outage:

Blame for much of the disparity this year fell on the outage at Exxon Mobil's Torrance refinery. Exxon reduced output at the facility to less than 20% after an explosion in February destroyed a pollution control system.

Normally, Torrance accounts for 10% of the state's refined capacity and 20% of the capacity in Southern California.

Oil industry experts thought the plant would return to service by July, even if only with a temporary fix. Then it was expected that perhaps by year's end, Exxon would increase production.

Neither happened. And now the plant isn't expected to return to full capacity until February, just in time for Exxon to sell the facility to contracted buyer PBF Energy, a Parsippany, NJ-based firm.

But even as inventories in California have increased from summer lows, gas prices in the L.A. region and across the state remain out of step with the rest of the country.

Read the rest of the story at the link.  

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Usually It's Just Hot Air, But ... 

An Algore Cold Front Is Moving In From The West

Breaking news: Cheyenne, WY, broke 123-year-old snowfall record with 6.7 inches; old record was 3.3 inches in 1892.

After Denver, the Kennedy clan can head for Cheyenne. Algore is probably already there testing out his new SUV.

But look at that in Cheyenne. Again, it was not simply beating the record by a tenth of an inch, but the old record was absolutely crushed. More than twice as much snow fell as the previous record.

From I Hate The Media, back in 2010:

The pathetically unprophetic Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. wrote a column last year in which he bemoaned global warming and suggested that children of the future might never see snow again.

Meanwhile out in southern California:

National Weather Service reports record low temperature of 40 degrees set at Los Angeles airport, tying record set in 1971.

Wasn't there a global warming conference or something in Paris or Vienna or Bowman just last week?