Tag: refineries

America closes refineries while the rest of the world races to build them

When Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz at the end of February, the world relearned a lesson it keeps forgetting crude oil, by itself, moves nothing. Trucks, tractors, aircraft and ships run on diesel, gasoline, jet fuel and bunker fuel — transportation fuels that exist only after crude oil has passed through a refinery.

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From CFACT

BY RON STEIN AND YOSHIHIRO MURINOKA:

When Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz at the end of February, the world relearned a lesson it keeps forgetting crude oil, by itself, moves nothing. Trucks, tractors, aircraft and ships run on diesel, gasoline, jet fuel and bunker fuel — transportation fuels that exist only after crude oil has passed through a refinery.

Asia felt the shock first. As crude supplies tightened, Asian refiners cut throughput and some curbed transportation fuel exports to protect their own markets. Even after the April ceasefire, tanker traffic through the strait remained far below pre-war levels.

Seven months later, Gulf crude exports are recovering, though many cargoes now travel longer and costlier routes. Diesel is not. In August, Gulf diesel exports were barely a quarter of pre-war levels, as refineries damaged in the war remained offline. In Russia, Ukrainian drone strikes have forced half of the country’s six largest diesel refineries to cut or halt output, and Moscow has banned diesel exports. In February, the Gulf and Russia together supplied nearly half of the world’s seaborne diesel. A damaged diesel unit cannot be replaced quickly, and the diesel capacity lost to war and refinery closures may take years to replace.

The ripple reached California. The state has spent years making refining harder. Two refineries have recently closed, and more of the remaining seven are expected to follow. The gap is filled by imports, much of it from Asia. California’s policies did not reduce the state’s demand for refined products. They simply moved the source of those products across the Pacific — and into the path of a crisis on the other side of the world.

The step that makes raw crude oil resources usable

Modern life demands thousands of products, from medicines and fertilizers to plastics, lubricants, and transportation fuels. Most begin as crude oil, natural gas, or coal, which must be refined, gasified, or cracked before they can serve as feedstocks for manufacturing. Crude oil alone yields more than 6,000 products.

Natural resources have latent value. Processing is what makes that value usable. A nation that controls this step controls much of its economic future.

The developing world wants its own refineries

It is no surprise, then, that nations across Asia, Africa, and the Middle East want refineries of their own. Rising incomes mean rising transportation fuel demand, and the Hormuz crisis has shown every importer the cost of depending on someone else’s refinery.

Industry databases list roughly 180 new refinery projects announced or planned worldwide for this decade, about 70 of them in Africa. OPEC expects some 5.8 million barrels per day of new refining capacity by 2030, more than 90 percent of it in Asia-Pacific, Africa and the Middle East.

Announced is not built

Engineers know that a project announcement is only the beginning. A refinery must pass through planning, environmental assessment, permitting, financing, front-end engineering, construction, and commissioning. Each stage is a filter.

One of us studied China’s coal-to-gas sector during its boom a decade ago, when dozens of synthetic natural gas projects were announced. Years later, only four were in operation.

Refining is proven technology, so attrition will be far lower. But the lesson holds: count what is being built, not what is being announced. Even so, roughly half of expected capacity growth is already operating or under construction — several million barrels per day. The demand for refined crude oil is real and growing worldwide.

Who can build refineries?

The bottleneck is not ambition. It is capability.

The core process technologies — hydrocracking, catalytic cracking, reforming—are licensed by only a handful of companies. Perhaps two or three dozen engineering, procurement, and construction (EPC) contractors worldwide can deliver a large grassroots refinery. Heavy-wall reactors and large compressors come from a limited number of manufacturers, with long delivery times. The same contractors, compressor makers, and commissioning teams are now needed to repair war-damaged refineries in the Gulf — competing directly with new projects in the developing world. And a refinery needs trained operators, maintenance crews and a regulatory system capable of overseeing it safely. The refinery technical talent cannot be imported overnight.

A refinery can be closed in months. Building one takes five to seven years or more.

Who will pay?

A large refinery costs billions of dollars. Nigeria’s 650,000-barrel-per-day Dangote refinery cost roughly $20 billion.

At the very moment developing nations need this capital, multilateral lenders and many Western banks have stepped back from fossil fuel projects in the name of climate policy. Chinese contractors, meanwhile, arrive with state-backed financing and a construction team in a single package.

Whatever one thinks of the “debt trap” debate, the structure is clear: those who finance and build a nation’s refineries gain lasting influence over its transportation fuel supply. Western climate finance policies have not reduced developing nations’ need for refined products. They have only changed who builds the refineries.

Pollution moves; it does not disappear

Imported fuels must meet U.S. product specifications, and ships are subject to international limits on fuel sulfur, with stricter rules near North American coasts. But the emissions and safety standards at the refinery itself are set where the refinery stands — often far looser than in California.

Closing a tightly regulated California refinery and importing from one with weaker standards, then shipping the product thousands of miles, does not clean the air. It exports the emissions and adds the voyage.

A view from Asia

For Asia, conflict in the Gulf is not a distant event. It is paid for at the pump in Tokyo, Seoul, Mumbai, and Manila, and in the price of every product that depends on refined crude oil. When the strait closes, Asian refineries run short, and the shortage travels on to California.

What the world needs is not another round of escalation but the restoration of free and stable navigation. America should remember that some 95 percent of the world’s 8 billion people live outside its borders. It can end the policies that are forcing its own refineries to close, and help developing nations build theirs well — with technology, training, and financing.

Japan knows this work. For decades, Japanese engineering firms have built refineries, petrochemical complexes, and gas plants across the Middle East and trained the people who run them.

Crude oil is not useless; it is unfinished. Refining completes it. The nations that understand this are building refineries. The question is whether America, Japan, and other partners will help them do it — or leave the job, and the influence, to others.

This article originally appeared at America Out Loud

Green Taxes Are Decimating British Industry – And My New Report Proves It

Britain lost two oil refineries last year – Grangemouth closed in April and Lindsey followed in August, leaving just four operating sites: Fawley, Humber, Pembroke and Stanlow.

Britain is increasingly dependent on imports.

Refining is highly energy intensive, so refiners have always had strong commercial incentives to improve efficiency: every unit of energy they save reduces costs.

AI generated by Grok

From The Daily Sceptic

By Kathryn Porter

Green taxes are decimating British industry and driving up energy prices, with nothing to show for it as emissions are merely pushed offshore, says Kathryn Porter, who has a new report setting out the damning details.

This week I published a new report into Britain’s oil refining sector, Fuel, Refineries and the UK ETS: What Policymakers Need to Know. Its conclusions are alarming.

Britain lost two oil refineries last year – Grangemouth closed in April and Lindsey followed in August, leaving just four operating sites: Fawley, Humber, Pembroke and Stanlow. My report finds that Government policy, and in particular the UK Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS), is making it increasingly hard for the remaining refineries to compete.

This matters because liquid fuels still provide 47% of UK final energy consumption. Diesel, petrol and jet kerosene remain essential to transport, aviation, agriculture, construction and industry, with no alternatives available at scale in the near term.

Yet Britain is increasingly dependent on imports. In 2025 we imported 15.5 million tonnes more petroleum products than we exported, the largest deficit since becoming a net importer in 2013. Closing domestic refining capacity doesn’t mean we stop consuming refined products, it just means we import more, effectively outsourcing their production. Bizarrely, Government policy is actively encouraging this.

My analysis finds that the four remaining UK refineries face a net ETS cash cost of around £200 million per year. Their gross carbon-cost disadvantage relative to refiners outside carbon-pricing regimes is around £540 million per year. That’s a significant handicap in an internationally competitive, relatively low-margin business.

British refineries compete against facilities in the US, Middle East and Asia, many of which are newer, larger and more sophisticated, while also benefiting from state support, preferential access to crude oil, cheaper labour and much cheaper energy.

ExxonMobil UK’s Managing Director Paul Greenwood recently told MPs that his company is paying £70-80 million a year in carbon dioxide costs, which he expects to rise to £150 million over the next four or five years. His competitors, he pointed out, aren’t paying them. He explicitly identified this cost differential as one of the factors causing UK refineries to close. This might be defensible if the ETS was causing refiners to reduce their emissions. But it isn’t.

Refining is highly energy intensive, so refiners have always had strong commercial incentives to improve efficiency: every unit of energy they save reduces costs. European refineries were making significant efficiency improvements long before emissions trading existed.

Beyond incremental efficiency gains, there are few meaningful investments UK refiners can make today to materially reduce their emissions. All four remaining refineries have explored major decarbonisation investments, but none has gone ahead. Carbon capture and hydrogen schemes are not commercially viable without substantial government support, which has been discussed for years but not actually delivered.

Increasing the carbon price doesn’t magically make new decarbonisation technologies available. It just makes refining in Britain more expensive.

The Government knows carbon pricing creates a competitiveness problem, which is why energy-intensive industries receive some ETS allowances for free and why it is introducing a Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM). The CBAM is supposed to protect British manufacturers by imposing an equivalent carbon cost on imported goods. Except refined petroleum products aren’t included.

A tanker of diesel or jet fuel can arrive from India, the Middle East or elsewhere without bearing the carbon cost imposed on the British refinery with which it competes. And refiners can’t simply pass their ETS costs through to consumers: refined products are internationally traded and largely fungible. If the British product becomes too expensive, buyers can buy imported alternatives.

When a British refinery closes, our demand for fuel doesn’t disappear – it’s met by imports instead. Imports that often have a higher carbon intensity because they are refined in countries with dirtier energy, with further emissions incurred in transportation. Closing the British refinery does not eliminate the associated emissions, it simply moves them somewhere else. That’s not decarbonisation, it’s offshoring.

In fact, it’s a form of greenwashing. Politicians celebrate reductions in Britain’s territorial emissions while ignoring emissions embodied in the increasing amounts of imported goods we use.

One of the most significant findings in my report comes from examining emissions trading compliance data. Of 1,702 UK installations on the EU ETS compliance register, 292 closed between 2008 and 2020. Since the UK ETS began in 2021, another 183 sites out of 1,415 registered installations have closed. Those figures don’t yet include Lindsey and Grangemouth.

Free allocations tell a similar story, falling from 37.8 million tonnes in 2021 to just 23.6 million tonnes in 2026, a drop of 38%. The largest recent reduction was 4.6 million allowances following the closure of the Port Talbot blast furnaces. Yet British demand for steel didn’t disappear with the blast furnaces. UK steel demand actually increased from 8.1 million tonnes in 2023 to 9.3 million tonnes in 2024 while the domestic share of supply fell dramatically.

Carbon dioxide molecules don’t care whether they were emitted in Port Talbot, Immingham, India or China. If climate change is the justification for these policies, global rather than domestic emissions are what matter.

This also casts a different light on falling European energy demand. EU industrial energy consumption fell 8.1% between 2014 and 2024 and has been in structural decline since 1990. Since the 2022 energy crisis there has been a particularly sharp contraction in energy-intensive industrial output as European businesses struggle with high energy costs.

This hits demand for refined products because factories consume diesel for on-site logistics, mobile machinery and backup generation, while their supply chains generate road-freight demand. Close the factory and all of that demand disappears. Falling energy consumption isn’t necessarily evidence of successful decarbonisation – it often just means we’re producing less.

This absurdity isn’t confined to industry. Since coal disappeared from Britain’s electricity system, gas has been the principal source of large-scale dispatchable generation. We still need it when wind and solar output is low, and there is currently no commercially viable investment that allows gas generators to significantly reduce or eliminate their emissions. Renewables aren’t incentivised by the ETS since they require huge subsidies to be built.

So what exactly is the ETS achieving in electricity? It makes electricity more expensive. And that’s it.

Gas generation sets the wholesale electricity price most of the time, with carbon costs now accounting for more than a fifth of wholesale electricity prices. Unlike refineries, generators can pass those costs through, so households and businesses pay more for their electricity.

Worse, we tax industries into near-oblivion and then, realising they’re actually important, are forced to consider subsidising them to help them stay open. That is utterly incoherent.

The original economic logic behind carbon pricing is superficially attractive: put a price on emissions and allow businesses to discover the cheapest means of reducing them. But that mechanism only works where real, viable decarbonisation choices exist.

Where economically sensible efficiency improvements are available, businesses already have strong incentives to pursue them. Where commercially viable substitutes exist, businesses already have incentives to adopt them. Where neither exists, increasing the carbon price doesn’t create them. It either makes British production uncompetitive against imports or raises costs for British consumers.

My report concludes that the UK should, at the very least, remove refineries from the ETS. Apply the same analysis to the rest of the economy and the justification for the entire scheme falls apart.

The UK needs to stop confusing lower territorial emissions with decarbonisation. An environmental policy which exports emissions, destroys domestic industry, increases import dependence and raises global emissions is deeply irrational.

It’s time to abolish the ETS.

Fuel, Refineries and the UK ETS: What Policymakers Need to Know can be downloaded here.

Kathryn Porter is an Independent Energy Consultant. She holds a Master’s degree in Physics and an MBA, and is an associate member of the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Energy Studies executive council. Subscribe to her blog.

California is Running Out of Refineries – And Running Out of Time

With the recent closures of the Valero and Phillips refineries that processed crude oil and the 2023 conversions of Marathon in Martinez and Phillips 66 in Rodeo that are no longer running crude oil, just renewable diesel, California’s remaining six refineries that process crude oil do not have the capacity to produce all that California demands of 58 million gallons of transportation fuel DAILY

From CO2- Coalition- Substack

By Ronald Stein* and Mike Ariza

With no pipelines crossing the Sierra Nevada, California is an energy island, separated from the crude oil supplies and refinery infrastructure of the other continental states. As a result, the state’s transportation fuel needs—for airports, cars, trucks, and ships serving three of America’s busiest ports—must be met by in-state refineries.

With the recent closures of the Valero and Phillips refineries that processed crude oil and the 2023 conversions of Marathon in Martinez and Phillips 66 in Rodeo that are no longer running crude oil, just renewable diesel, California’s remaining six refineries that process crude oil do not have the capacity to produce all that California demands of 58 million gallons of transportation fuel DAILY:

In addition, approximately 5.2 million metric tons of bunker fuel are an annual demand for the ships in three of the busiest Ports in America, located in California.

  • Port of Los Angeles had more than 1,800 vessel arrivals in 2024, which includes cruise and merchant ships.
  • Port of Long Beach handled over 9.6 million container units in 2024, indicating a very high volume of ship activity, plus cruise ships.
  • Port of Oakland, which also handles significant cargo volumes, contributes to the total number of cruise and merchant ships needing fuel.

California policies have reduced the state to six operational crude-oil refineries, forcing it to import 14 to 15 million of the 37 million gallons of gasoline it consumes each day, primarily from Asian countries.

Because of the reduction in transportation fuels being imported to California from Asian refineries, President Trump made the call to waive the Jones Act. This allowed foreign flagged tankers to take fuel receipts from states in the Gulf of America along with the East coast and deliver them via the Panama Canal, to California ports. Normal rules require domestic shipping vessels to be American built, owned, and crewed.

  • A Jones Act waiver is a temporary legal exemption that allows foreign-flagged ships to carry cargo between U.S. ports, i.e., from the Gulf Coast through the Panama Canal, to the West Coast ports in California. Under the Jones Act waiver in the last 3 ½ months foreign flagged tankers have transported more gasoline to California than what has been shipped to the state in the last 15 years combined.
  • The Petroleum Administration for Defense Districts PADD 5 (West Coast) jet fuel inventories normally track between 9 – 11 million barrels on hand. By April 2026 inventories were at 2.6 million and dropping. This was the lowest inventory for that time in more than 23 Years. Then on April 2, 2026, South Korea, California’s largest supplier of jet fuel, announced that they were suspending jet fuel exports. With this announcement and the fact that PADD 5 inventories were getting near historic lows, Southwest Airlines took unprecedented historic action. Southwest chartered a tanker flagged under the Marshall Islands to transport 306,389 barrels of jet fuel from the Valero Pasadena dock in Houston to berths in Los Angeles and Long Beach. In addition to Southwest Airlines’ unprecedented action, in the last 3 ½ months foreign flagged tankers have transported more jet fuel from PADD 1 and PADD 3 to California than the state has received in the last 36 YEARS COMBINED.
  • On August 10, 2026, President Donald Trump approved a 90-day extension of the Jones Act waiver that will allow foreign-flagged vessels to transport critical transportation fuels demanded in California and agricultural commodities between U.S. ports in the Gulf Coast and West Coast from August 17 through mid-November 2026.

California is the 4th largest economy because it has always had sufficient refinery capacity to manufacture the humongous in-state demands for transportation fuels. It is important to note that long term federal waivers will not solve the supply chain of transportation fuels demanded by the 4th largest economy in the world.

The root cause of refineries hemorrhaging out of the state is California state policies. National policy “band aids” cannot provide the long-term solution to a California sponsored hemorrhaging of the in-state refineries needed to manufacture the transportation fuel demands within the state.

With those recent refinery closures of the Phillips in Wilmington and Valero in Benicia and previous conversions of Marathon in Martinez and Phillips 66 in Rodeo that are no longer processing crude oil, just renewable diesel, California must now rely on the importation of transportation fuels that cannot be made in the State, 40% for gasoline demand and 35% for jet fuel and diesel demand.

  1. With the onset of the Iranian war, crude oil supplies being shipped through the strait of Hormuz were cut off to the Asian countries that were supplying California with transportation fuel. This forced the Asian Refineries to reduce their crude oil charge rates. As the crude oil charge rates declined their production rates of the vital fuels for California also declined to the point where they were forced to suspend their shipments to our state. By the first week of April 2026 nearly all outbound fuel shipments were cut off. With transit times across the Pacific Ocean running between 35 – 45 days this set California on a course for a supply shock starting in the last week of May 2026 with subsequent transportation fuel shortages at the terminal and fuel station levels starting in mid to late June 2026.
  2. To help California, Gulf refineries bumped up their production rates from a normal of 95-96% to near 98% of capacity. Some refineries also deferred their scheduled 1st and 2nd quarter maintenance shutdowns known as turnarounds to keep production online. Despite the slight increase in refinery rates most of the fuel that has been supplied to California has come from Petroleum Administration Defense District 1 (PADD 1) from the Gulf Coast and PADD 3 from the East Coast. In essence, California policies have caused the state to tap into other national military reserves. Refineries deferring their scheduled turnarounds is hazardous. Turnarounds are scheduled for a reason. Every day of delay further increases the possibility of extended downtimes due to equipment fouling or uncontrolled shutdowns due to equipment failure.

California State policies and economics have caused most of the in-state refineries to close over the last few decades and cease doing any manufacturing in the State which directly relates to transportation fuel shortages. The remaining seven refineries do not have the capacity to manufacture the supply chain demands for 58 million gallons a day of transportation fuels, and the bunker fuel demands of ships at 3 of the busiest ports in America located in California.

California is continuously increasing its reliance on costly foreign fuel imports from major polluting foreign refineries that ship those fuels long distances for 30 to 45 days across the Pacific Ocean by polluting tankers before reaching California ports. Because California’s unique environmental regulations require highly specialized fuel blends, and the domestic tanker fleet is too thin to fulfill its immense volume requirements, the state will be forced to look abroad. Refiners and marketers like those in the California Fuels & Convenience Alliance will likely pivot to importing replacement components from international markets, leaving California more exposed to global supply shocks and high replacement costs. However, given the current global supply strains, it is unlikely that they will find replacement transportation fuel sources. This will most likely lead to supply shocks within the state and the strong possibility of shortages of the daily transportation fuels that are demanded within the State.

Governor Newsom has received three letters from Chevron, Marathon, and PBF, owners of six of the remaining seven refineries in the state. All three letters state that if California refuses to negotiate with them on the newly proposed Cap and Invest amendments that were drafted by the California Air Resources Board (CARB), then they will seriously consider shuttering their operations and leaving the state like Valero did.

California’s Governor, Legislatures, Senators and Representatives must immediately implement plans to support the retention of the 7 remaining refineries. If these refiners shut down, then no amount of waiver tankers will be able to prevent current shortages from becoming humongous catastrophic shortages. These shortages will be of historical proportions. They will affect Nevada, Arizona, and if the ports are shut down, they will reach well into the center of the nation.

California is not proactively supporting the reanimating of the closed Valero Refinery in Benicia or the closed Phillips Refinery in Wilmington. In addition, California government is not making the necessary policy changes to avert the hemorrhaging loss of one or more of the remaining California Refineries.

We strongly encourage the President to immediately invoke the Defense Production Act (DPA) of 1950 which is a United States federal law that gives the President emergency powers to control domestic industries and private businesses. It ensures the nation has enough industrial resources and supplies for national defense, energy infrastructure, and major emergencies.Please share this information with teachers, students, and friends to encourage Energy Literacy conversations at the family dinner table.

Click this Link to Sign up for Energy Literacy from Ronald Stein

Originally published at America Out Loud, August 24, 2026.

Ronald Stein, P.E., is a CO2 Coalition member, engineer, columnist on energy literacy at America Out Loud NEWS, and advisor on energy literacy for the Heartland Institute and CFACT, and co-author of the Pulitzer Prize-nominated book “Clean Energy Exploitations.” He is also the recipient of an unsolicited Tribute to Ronald Stein from Stephen Heins.

The California Refinery Crisis is a National Security Risk for America

California’s refinery situation represents a significant vulnerability that extends beyond state-level economics to broader U.S. energy security and military readiness.
Energy security is national security, and California’s situation highlights the risks of rapid unilateral shifts without reliable backups

From The CO2 Coalition

By Ronald Stein

California is the 4th largest economy in the world and an “ENERGY ISLAND that is isolated from the other 49 States by the Sierra Mountains. There are no pipelines over those majestic mountains to connect the State to the rest of the country. Thus, California’s in-State refineries have been producing ALL the transportation fuels demanded on the California “Energy Island.”

  • Bunker fuel, about 1 million barrels ANNUALLY for the ships servicing three of the busiest Ports in America, located in California.
    • Port of Los Angeles had more than 1,800 vessel arrivals in 2024, which includes cruise and merchant ships.
    • Port of Long Beach handled over 9.6 million container units in 2024, indicating a very high volume of ship activity, plus cruise ships.
    • Port of Oakland, which also handles significant cargo volumes, contributes to the total number of cruise and merchant ships needing fuel.
  • Jet fuel: California has over 2,400 airports and aviation facilities, including 9 international airports and 30 major military airports. The demand is 13 million gallons of aviation fuel DAILY. Several of those airports have direct pipelines to local refineries. In 2019, California consumed 16.7% of the national total of jet fuel, making it the largest consumer of jet fuel in America.
  • Gasoline: For its 30 million vehicles, California is the second-largest consumer of motor gasoline among the 50 states, consuming 42 million gallons DAILY of gasoline, just behind Texas.
  • Diesel: Diesel fuel is the second largest transportation fuel used in California, consuming 10 million gallons DAILY of diesel to support the state’s trucking of products from 3 of the busiest shipping ports in America.

California’s regulatory environment has created a refining capacity vacuum that global markets are rushing to fill, as regional policy decisions are creating international market opportunities and reshaping geopolitical energy dynamics.

Liquid transportation fuels remain essential for sectors that are difficult to electrify. Aviation still depends on jet fuel, global shipping requires bunker fuel, heavy transport, construction, and the petrochemical industry continues to rely on refined petroleum products. Diesel and jet fuel, and petrochemical feedstocks, will remain crucial for decades, even with reduced demand for gasoline from electric vehicles. If local refining capacity decreases in California while demand persists, markets will respond by seeking transportation fuels elsewhere.

It must be remembered that crude oil, by itself, is useless black tar unless you build a multi-billion-dollar refinery to break it down to produce various types of transportation fuels and oil derivatives that are the basis of virtually all the products in our materialistic world.

California’s environmental regulations and aging infrastructure are inadvertently triggering a worldwide refinery construction boom. There will be economic consequences for California consumers as domestic refining capacity shrinks and import dependence grows. The paradox of California’s environmental policies and California’s emissions reductions may be increasing the global carbon footprint through longer supply chains.

In the future, 181 new refinery units that are planned or announced in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East will be providing transportation fuels to California’s 9 international airports, 30 major military airports, and 3 of the largest shipping ports.

These modern refineries in other countries are designed to operate on a massive scale, process multiple types of crude oil, and export transportation fuels worldwide. Tanker transport allows refined transportation fuels to reach major consumption centers, including ports such as the Port of Los Angeles, the Port of Long Beach, and the Port of Oakland.

As California’s refining capacity continues to decline, the California transportation fuel demands for its shipping ports, airports, cars, and trucks are among the highest in the nation and will be increasingly imported from refineries in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East.

California, the 4th-largest economy in the world, with growing dependence on transportation fuels produced at foreign refineries from refined crude oil, will pose a national security risk to the entire country.

California has closed 2 refineries, and more closures are on the way as the California Air Resources Board (CARB) is tightening up the regulations on emissions that may drive the remaining 6 refineries in the State to EXIT to more business-friendly States.

The 4th largest economy in the world NEEDS new refineries to process crude oil, to be built IN CALIFORNIA.

Energy “REALITY” tells us that we need refineries to convert that useless black tar into usable transportation fuels and products:

  • Planes, ships, trucks, and cars do not run on raw crude oil; they run on transportation fuels manufactured FROM crude oil by multi-billion-dollar refineries.
  • With no pipelines over the Sierra Mountain, the new refinery in Brownsville, Texas, will be useless to the California Energy Island that demands in-state refineries to provide transportation fuels for 30 major military locations, 9 international airports, 3 of the busiest ports in America, and fuels for the trucks that transport imported products to the rest of America.
  • Wind turbines and solar panels ONLY generate electricity, but CANNOT make any of the more than 6,000 products that are based on the oil derivatives manufactured out of raw crude oil, nor can wind and solar make any transportation fuels for the military, airports, merchant ships, automobiles, and trucks.
  • The world is not dependent on raw natural fossil fuels, but has become dependent on the products and transportation fuels MADE FROM oil, the same products and transportation fuels that Wind and Solar CANNOT make!
  • The world needs MORE REFINERIES to process that useless black tar into usable transportation fuels and products for life as we know it.

Collectively, the closure of the Phillips refinery in Southern California and the Valero refinery in Northern California provided about 17% of the state’s crude oil processing capacity to provide transportation fuels demanded in California. Thus, transportation fuel shortages are imminent for California, and it will be importing those transportation fuels from Africa, Asia, and the Middle East.

The supply chain of fuels and products refined from raw crude oil will face severe imbalances, most likely leading to higher costs and shortages for future generations.

With 99.5% of the 8 billion people on this planet Earth living outside the borders of California, CARB is solidifying California’s 4th largest economy in the world as a national security risk for America, as the State will be importing transportation fuels from foreign-based refineries to run its 30 military airports and 9 international airports.

Be sure to watch and listen to the Epoch Times interview from April 4, 2026:

The California Refinery Crisis: This author, Ronald Stein, addresses questions from the Chief Editor of The Epoch Times and TV Host of California Insider, Siyamak Khorrami.

Originally published on America Out loud News on May 11, 2026.

Ronald Stein, P.E. is a CO2 Coalition  member, engineer, energy consultant, speaker, author of books and articles on energy literacy, environmental policy, and human rights, and Founder of PTS Advance, a California based company.

Reviving U.S. Refining: Trump Announces Brownsville Project as First in Decades

US President Trump announced on March 11, 2026 (via Truth Social) that America First Refining will build the first new major U.S. oil refinery in nearly 50 years.

The project is a 168,000 barrels-per-day (bpd) greenfield refinery at the Port of Brownsville, Texas — a deep-water port with rail and sea access ideal for exports and logistics.

US President Trump announced on March 11, 2026 (via Truth Social) that America First Refining will build the first new major U.S. oil refinery in nearly 50 years.

The project is a 168,000 barrels-per-day (bpd) greenfield refinery at the Port of Brownsville, Texas — a deep-water port with rail and sea access ideal for exports and logistics.

Confirmed Project Details (as of April 11, 2026)

Design focus: Built specifically to process light, sweet U.S. shale oil (primarily from the Permian Basin and other domestic fracking plays). Many existing Gulf Coast refineries were reconfigured over the past 40+ years for heavier, sour imported crudes from Canada, Venezuela, or Mexico — creating a mismatch with America’s growing surplus of lighter domestic crude.

Scale: 20-year offtake agreement to process 1.2 billion barrels of U.S. shale oil (producing ~50 billion gallons of refined products like gasoline, diesel, and jet fuel). Trump called it a “historic $300 billion deal — the biggest in U.S. history.”

Partners: Backed by capital and long-term commitments from India’s Reliance Industries (world’s largest refining complex operator). The deal is framed as helping reduce the U.S. trade deficit with India while keeping crude supply and refining benefits domestic.

Timeline: Groundbreaking targeted for Q2 2026 (as early as April). Larger units expected onsite by 2028; fuel sales potentially starting 2029. Full commissioning for a project this size typically takes 5–7 years.

Benefits claimed: Thousands of constructions + permanent high-wage jobs in South Texas; enhanced energy security (no foreign heavy crude needed); increased domestic refining capacity; and “the cleanest refinery in the world” via modern tech.

Important Realism Check

“First in 50 years” is accurate for a major greenfield refinery: No comparable new standalone U.S. refinery has broken ground since the 1970s. Capacity has grown via expansions/debottlenecking of existing plants, but not new large-scale builds — largely due to regulatory, environmental, and economic hurdles.

Project history note: The site/development concept originated earlier (as Element Fuels/Hydrogen-powered plans in 2024) and was rebranded as America First Refining in late 2025. Trump’s announcement provided high-profile momentum via permitting/tax policy signals.

Challenges remain: Permitting, local/environmental opposition (common near the border), construction costs, and global oil markets could still shift timelines or economics. No groundbreaking has been confirmed in the ~30 days since announcement.

This fits Trump’s “America First” energy push amid record U.S. shale production and occasional refining bottlenecks that have led to exporting crude while importing some products. Supporters see it as unlocking domestic supply chains; skeptics note long lead times and foreign investment elements.

Right, Epoch Times, California’s Hostility to Oil and Gas is Driving Out Refineries

A recent article posted by The Epoch Times, “Phillips 66 to Close Los Angeles Oil Refinery,” explains how Phillips 66 is shutting down one of its refineries in response to uncertainty and “market dynamics;” uncertain dynamics created by the state’s climate and energy policies. This is true. California’s government is actively hostile towards anything related to oil and gas, so refineries shutting down should not come as a surprise.

From ClimateRealism

By Linnea Lueken

A recent article posted by The Epoch Times, “Phillips 66 to Close Los Angeles Oil Refinery,” explains how Phillips 66 is shutting down one of its refineries in response to uncertainty and “market dynamics;” uncertain dynamics created by the state’s climate and energy policies. This is true. California’s government is actively hostile towards anything related to oil and gas, so refineries shutting down should not come as a surprise.

Epoch reports that Phillips 66 “said on Oct. 16 that it plans to shut down its refinery in the Los Angeles area of California in the fourth quarter of 2025.” CEO Mark Lashier released a statement explaining that uncertainty and “market dynamics” affected their confidence in the long term “sustainability” of the plant and were responsible for Phillips 66 choosing the site for closure. Another spokesperson told Epoch that “low profitability” compared to other company assets was a factor, but claimed that Assembly Bill X2 – a bill that applies heavier regulatory burdens on oil refiners—was not strictly responsible. The spokesperson told Epoch that Phillips 66 isn’t quitting California entirely, but will find “new ways to serve California markets” which will increasingly include importing gasoline.

Because of the shutdown, California will lose production of 85,000 barrels of gasoline and 65,000 barrels of diesel and jet fuel every day.

Other oil companies responded more honestly and forceful to California’s new efforts to dictate refinery prices, with one Chevron executive stating flat out that “California’s policy choices have led to a gasoline shortage by driving suppliers away,” in a letter sent to the California legislature back in January.

Although Phillips 66 tried to play nice with California’s government, by saying that the particular bill wasn’t responsible, others Epoch interviewed were more directly tied the closure and California’s high gasoline prices to the state’s anti-fossil fuel policies. California Fuel and Convenience Alliance’s governmental affairs and regulatory director Alessandra Magnasco told Epoch that “[t] here is no mystery to our high gas prices—exploding overhead costs to run our stations, costly environmental regulations, and now, with even less supply in the market, every Californian will end up paying higher prices in this government-created energy crisis.” She went on to say that “refinery closures are a direct result of policies that make it increasingly difficult to maintain and expand critical infrastructure.”

This is absolutely correct, and good on Epoch for reporting it.

California’s fuel prices are consistently higher than the national average, currently sitting at $4.65 per gallon versus the national average of $3.19, according to AAA’s gas price tracking website. Californians already pay about $1.42 per gallon in state and federal taxes, and each new fuel standards rule and bit of anti-oil legislation pushes the costs for fuel in the state higher.

Importing fuel from out of state is going to make it more expensive, and it is unlikely that Phillips is the only oil refiner that will soon be feeling the crush.

Higher fuel prices in California will make everything more expensive for Californians, not just filling their tanks, because as Climate Realism previously reported in “Thanks, Center Square, For Reporting on the Effects of High Fossil Fuel Prices on Food Prices,” high fuel prices impact the cost of food in particular. Diesel fuel powers trucks and tractors and other equipment necessary for planting and harvest, as well as eventual transportation and processing.

The worst part is, California is not bringing just themselves down with their insanity – they are dragging other states down with them. California refineries export fuel to neighboring states like Nevada and Arizona, and their governors openly opposed the bill because of the impact it will have on their own fuel prices.

Imagining that laying yet another stack of regulations on top of the already overburdened California oil and gas industry would not result in refinery and other fuel business closures is ignorant. The Epoch Times does a good job of pointing out the implications of California’s energy policies, displaying the real casualties of Newsom’s and the Democratic leadership in the state’s efforts to restrict fossil fuel use, lost jobs in the state and residents paying higher prices.