Importing Gasoline Will Lead to Economic and Environmental Failure

As California faces the closure of two major refineries, some lawmakers in Sacramento are suggesting that the solution is simple: just import more gasoline. It’s a proposal disconnected from reality, and the California Independent Petroleum Association (CIPA) and its CEO, Rock Zierman, are strongly pushing back against it.

Who’s going to produce it?

Using what crude oil?

At what cost to consumers, workers, and California’s energy industry?

Has anyone seriously considered how many more tankers, trucks, and trains it would take to replace what California already produces efficiently and under the world's strictest environmental standards?

This simplistic, misguided thinking ignores the environmental and public health impacts of significantly increasing the number of tankers arriving at our ports and trucks transporting fuel on our roads. The emissions, congestion, and safety hazards alone should alert any serious policymaker. Yet somehow Sacramento is willing to act as if these consequences don’t exist.

In his legislative discussions, Zierman reminds lawmakers that California needs our domestic oil producers and the refineries CIPA members supply.

California can’t keep punishing our producers with endless permitting delays and hostile laws, and then expect that California can just import oil and gasoline from countries that violate human rights and ignore our environmental laws.