Why Gasoline Gets More Expensive Every Year In California -- August 18, 2021

I'm too tired -- actually not tired, but hungry, so I'm going to post the map and links to two stories and readers can sort it out. 

Thank you to the reader who alerted me to the story. 

This story has become very, very complicated due to late-developing changes. I think I have it figured out and the solution(s) seem(s) pretty straightforward. I'll let readers sort it out for themselves.

So, without further ado, the map, and the links to the three articles. 

The map:

The links:

The [Santa Barbara] Independent, August 14, 2021:

A one-two punch that very few people saw coming is now posing sudden, unexpected, and potentially unanswerable questions about the viability of ExxonMobil’s proposal to transport up to 70 truckloads of crude from its Las Flores Canyon facility on the Gaviota Coast to Phillips 66’s Santa Maria Pump Station outside of Santa Maria.

Early the Thursday morning of August 13, Phillips announced its intention to shut down its oil refining operations at the company’s Rodeo refinery located outside San Francisco — the ultimate destination for ExxonMobil’s Las Flores crude — and repurpose that industrial facility into a refinery for fats, greases, soybean oils, and other renewable energy sources.

According to a Phillips press release, the company hopes that production can begin as soon as 2024. The same statement reported the company’s intention to shut down the Santa Maria transfer facility, where the Las Flores crude was to have been transferred from trucks into Phillips’s Line 300 pipeline to the Rodeo facility. The Santa Maria facility is scheduled to be shut down in 2023.

From KSBY, August 18, 2021, ExxonMobil requests permission to move oil up US Highway 101. 

From KSBY, August 13, 2021, Phillips 66 announces it will shut down Central Coast refinery in 2023.