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California leaders report four to six weeks worth of gasoline and diesel supply

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Re: California leaders report four to six weeks worth of gasoline and diesel supply

#71
post #23

6 weeks are standard. If you want to keep it for longer it needs additives which increase price. Noone does that usually.

Yeah, seems like a standard supply level to me. "California’s inventory has averaged just over 20 days of supply over the last five years (2019–23), compared with the U.S. average of 21.6 days." https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=63944

Usually when something like this is reported, it is because of some other milestone.

Like, they have 6 weeks, on hand, in tanks already delivered.

But, all of the ships in-bound are now done.

After the war started, there was a record number of ships, already filled, already in-transit. But now they have all reached their destinations. So there is no more incoming.

Re: California leaders report four to six weeks worth of gasoline and diesel supply

#72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

CA’s requirement that it gets its own blend of gas is combined with how its openly hostile towards its ever decreasing refineries and that it is impossible for a new refinery to ever open makes it’s supplies absurdly limited

People in LA need to breathe during the summer time. So yes we demand a blend that protects our residents. And the refiners are choosing to close refineries. They are not being compelled.

They are being strangled, it’s their choice to tap out is how I would put it.

The improvement in air quality is due to the clean air act, catalytic converters, and the shuttering of industry, the gas blend plays a minor part. Even then, with gas so much higher it will materially make peoples lives worse, at some point society would be better off getting rid of the blend.

Re: California leaders report four to six weeks worth of gasoline and diesel supply

#73

Governments have gotten in the bad habit of acting like nothing will ever go wrong. Living paycheck-to-paycheck, so to speak. Cali not the only one suffering this fate. It doesnt matter if it's Trump's fault or not. Lets just say it is. Bad things happen. You have to be ready.

> Bad things happen. You have to be ready. You're not wrong, but also how "ready" is "ready enough"? What about things the US doesn't generally have access to? Rare earth minerals? Helium? Cobalt? Coffee? It also costs money to build the infra for storage and more money to maintain. There's always a trade-off. I think governments have done an acceptable job of being ready, but they are predicated on the assumption th…

Moving to green and nuclear energy, pressing hard to upgrade the national grid would be the obvious things to reduce our short-term dependence on fossil fuels.

Energy independence is not a pipe dream, and it isn't ever going to be 100%. We should be working toward it.

We may be somewhat dependent on China or other sources for solar panels, for example, but once we have the product, it has a multi-decade lifetime compared to an instantly-consumed fuel.

Even if you're a fossil fuel fanatic, one should be advocating for more of our refineries to be tooled for processing our own crude oil. But that isn't as profitable in the short term, so we don't do it.

P.S. politically, we've seen our system does not have the capacity to deal with a malicious executive taking total control of the government. We need a complete rebuild of our legislative and executive branches.

Re: California leaders report four to six weeks worth of gasoline and diesel supply

#74
post #37

I’m surprised that only “18.9% of new car sales” in California are electric [1]. [1] https://www.energy.ca.gov/news/2026-01/california-surpasses-...

Other countries have $15k new electric city cars for sale. The US doesn't. Our domestic car manufacturers are either uninterested or unable to make them, and import bans are in place on foreign cars that meet that price point. Also our infra not being 240v is hurting us. The rest of the world can just plug in overnight to any regular outlet and it is good enough for almost any commute. My EV on a 120v outlet I can ma…

> Also our infra not being 240v is hurting us. The rest of the world can just plug in overnight to any regular outlet and it is good enough for almost any commute.

US homes don't need any significant accommodations for 240 volt infra. Plenty of US home appliances are already 240 volt; this is a solved problem.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jMmUoZh3Hq4

Re: California leaders report four to six weeks worth of gasoline and diesel supply

#75
post #35

Isn't 4-6 weeks about normal conditions? It feels like a large amount of slack for a modern JIT logistical system. Anymore enters strategic reserves territory.

Sure, but these aren't normal conditions. So that JIT amount is gonna rapidly become NJIT.

I'm not very creative, but if we could use DJiT to go along with the at fault party's initials, that could be fun.

Re: California leaders report four to six weeks worth of gasoline and diesel supply

#76
post #64
post #45

What this article fails to mention is that there are also a record number of empty tankers routed to the US refineries right now, with the intention of shifting still-relatively cheap US oil products to overseas markets where the prices are already much higher and shortages have already hit. The effects of the Iran war on the US economy will really start to kick in over the next several months.

California also needs a special blend that is only required in California (CARBOB). A lot of that is refined outside of the US, because there is not the capacity domestically. Cali could immediately have more fuel and cheaper prices by dropping their special requirements.

Is this an emissions reducing based blend?

Re: California leaders report four to six weeks worth of gasoline and diesel supply

#77
post #9

People will blame climate policy on this but this is evidence that we've failed to move off our fossil fuel dependency.

Texas is better at this because they don't restrict solar with “enviromental” nimby lawsuits.

Re: California leaders report four to six weeks worth of gasoline and diesel supply

#78

Governments have gotten in the bad habit of acting like nothing will ever go wrong. Living paycheck-to-paycheck, so to speak. Cali not the only one suffering this fate. It doesnt matter if it's Trump's fault or not. Lets just say it is. Bad things happen. You have to be ready.

We were fully warned of this with the supply chain disruption of covid.

Global supply chain has become dangerously dependent upon a stable geopolitical environment that has been unnaturally provided by the United States for the last near 100 years in post world war II.

This unipolar naval supremacy is not a normal situation. One of the things that triggered world war I was an escalating arms race in battleships between Germany and Great Britain.

I would recommend the United States practically every country, Force its automobile manufacturers to go very hardcore down the plugin hybrid electric vehicle, which will maximize the battery supply to electrify the largest amount of daily consumer transportation.

I would say you should impose a minimum of 40 to 50 mi for an all-electric range, The 20 mile range which is degraded to really about 12 now is not sufficient in my four phev.

Hybrids also weighs far less gasoline and idling and low torque low RPM situations like stop and go and sitting in traffic jams, by utilizing gener of breaking, using the electric motor for the 0-25 acceleration that ICE engines are incredibly inefficient at.

It's my opinion that the equipment and manufacturing switchover should be much less of an imposition on car manufacturers than the full EV switchover. Consumers do not have such a shocking switch to driving habits because a phev just functions like a normal ICE car if the battery drains, it solves long-range transportation issues and concerns with EVs.

Most car manufacturers know how to make turbocharged high efficiency compact engines, most major manufacturers I believe know how to use Atkinson cycle with variable valve timing combined with a hybrid drivetrain to further boost gas efficiency

Re: California leaders report four to six weeks worth of gasoline and diesel supply

#79
post #64
post #45

What this article fails to mention is that there are also a record number of empty tankers routed to the US refineries right now, with the intention of shifting still-relatively cheap US oil products to overseas markets where the prices are already much higher and shortages have already hit. The effects of the Iran war on the US economy will really start to kick in over the next several months.

California also needs a special blend that is only required in California (CARBOB). A lot of that is refined outside of the US, because there is not the capacity domestically. Cali could immediately have more fuel and cheaper prices by dropping their special requirements.

Presumably that might get an emergency resolution in the coming weeks.

Re: California leaders report four to six weeks worth of gasoline and diesel supply

#80
post #68
post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In such a situation - especially heading into the midterms - an export ban may be increasingly probable.

An export ban wouldn’t really help much: US oil production is (now) predominantly light crude, while US refinery capacity is oriented towards heavy crude from the gulf or Venezuela. We produce more oil than we use, but we can’t refine it all.

> US refinery capacity is oriented towards heavy crude from the gulf or Venezuela.

Or from Alberta.

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