California Bringing Gasoline From Bahamas, Raising Fears of Higher Prices
Gas has risen 40 cents in California over the last two weeks, averaging $4.58 a gallon.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom hates the fossil fuel industry, waging a war on the oil companies. A few examples:
- California Losing Important Valero Oil Refinery, Exclusive Supplier of Travis AFB
- California Policymakers Ponder State Ownership of Oil Refineries
- California Sues ‘Big Oil’, Accusing the Companies of Downplaying Climate Risks
- California’s Descent Accelerates as Newsom’s New Bill Dings Oil Companies for “Excessive Profits”
California already lacks interstate pipelines, leading to a supply shortage. The loss of refineries further reduced the supply.
Both raised prices.
Instead of keeping oil companies and refineries in California, the state chose an expensive route by bringing gas in from…the Bahamas:
US supplies of gasoline are being shipped out of the country to travel thousands of miles via the Bahamas before finally ending up in California, a state battling shrinking fuelmaking capacity and high pump prices.
Shipments on the circuitous route are increasing. California imported more gasoline in November than ever before, with more than 40% coming from the Bahamas.
California is now importing gasoline on a 4,000+ mile detour through the Bahamas before it reaches Los Angeles.
Let that sink in.
Because of Sacramento’s self-inflicted refinery closures, refusal to expand in-state capacity, hostility to interstate pipelines, and rigid… pic.twitter.com/UVl7vvYVoi
— Mike Netter (@nettermike) February 16, 2026
Why take this route?
That Jones Act, a 106-year-old maritime law:
Under the Jones Act, any goods shipped between US ports must travel on US-built, owned and operated vessels. Those tankers are in short supply and expensive to charter. There are about 55 Jones Act-compliant oil tankers worldwide, compared with more than 7,000 oil tankers globally.
“Even if there are such vessels, they would charge more than a foreign-flagged vessel would,” said Martin Davies, director of Tulane University’s Maritime Law Center.
You’d think sidestepping the Jones Act would be cheaper, right?
Well, the gas travels 1,100 to 1,300 nautical miles from refineries along the Gulf Coast to the Bahamas.
Then the tanker travels 4,000 to 4,500 nautical miles from the Bahamas to the West Coast.
It can take up to three weeks for a tanker to arrive in California. You also have to pay to transit the Panama Canal. The tanker has to travel through volatile areas.
It’s a complex situation. The more complex, the more money.
Gas has risen 40 cents in California over the last two weeks, averaging $4.58 a gallon. Yes, that’s more than Hawaii.
The national average is $2.92.
The rise in prices comes after Phillips 66 started winding down its Los Angeles refinery and Valero closed its Benicia refinery.
California only has six operating refineries:
Two others are located in the Bay Area, including Chevron’s Richmond refinery and PBF Energy’s Martinez refinery. The other four are located in Southern California – Marathon’s Los Angeles refinery, Chevron’s El Segundo refinery, PBF Energy’s Torrance refinery and Valero’s Wilmington refinery.
Have fun, California.
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Comments
Off-topic: Jesse Jackson is dead.
What is the over and under on how many weeks we will be drubbed with fawning tributes?
Which Democrat will be the first to propose a holiday for him?
Fawning tributes are easy and cheap content to produce. I’d bet some newspaper opinion shapers already have some pre-written, just as some of them have obituaries pre-written for certain people who have managed to avoid the Grim Reaper longer than the actuary tables predict.
They lumped all the presidents into one holiday and many localities have taken Columbus’s day away from him and given it to “indigenous peoples”.
I think MLK is the only person with a national holiday. Turn it into a generic catchall and include JJ or whoever you want to pretend you are honoring on your day off.
Well, it’s a lot kinder than The Greaseman’s proposition.
MLK is one of two people with a US holiday in his name. The other: Jesus Christ.
Since you brought it up here’s my Jackson experience. In the 1980s, I was contracted to photograph Jesse speaking to students at an all black Potomac High School in Oxon Hill, MD. With no media there expose his hypocrisy, he let loose with a Coach Carteresque tirade about not blaming whitey for your problems, get off of your lazy assses and study, do your homework, and to keep it in your pants, not your girlfriend’s pants. quite the difference from his usual speeches.
Good morning, Grizz.
Wasn’t it Jackson who said that, if he were walking through a dark alley and heard a sound behind him, he would hope it was made by a white man?
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It was also Jackson who stated that when he worked as a waiter he’d spit in the food ot white patrons.
I heard him speak at Portland State in the 90s. He did his usual rhyming pantomime of platitudes without any real content. God have grace for the grifters.
“What is the over and under on how many weeks we will be drubbed with fawning tributes?”
It just extends my drinking season.
Who cares that one of the Justice Brothers who made millions exhorting companies is dead? Jackson even managed to secure a Budweiser Distributorship in AZ for his kid passing on the grift. To hell with him.
Did you mean extorting? Exhorting is pretty much a preacher’s main job.
Someone really stupid, corrupt, and racist. I vote Maxine Waters.
Gasoline prices in the Birmingham area have been bouncing around $2.30-$2.50 the last few weeks, getting back over $2.50 in recent days, especially in the city. California pays twice what we pay in the poor, backward Old South. Gasoline for $6 a gallon or more is in their future.
Stupid is as stupid does. And you can’t fix it.
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The problem for the leftist wokiestas and their virtue signaling policies is that they are almost exclusively based on ‘luxury’ beliefs. Without sufficient activity in the remainder of the system outside their control the poor choices and bad decisions are revealed like a tide going out. We see this with electricity prices as well in blue States which pinned their economic future on wind/solar by enacting net zero requirements, closing nuke/coal plants, limiting/forbidding additional Nat Gas pipelines. While simultaneously undermining the production of their electricity they also moved to increase demand by banning Nat gas appliances. There’s not enough slack in rest of the Nation to paper over the disastrous policy choices made in blue west coast and blue northeast States. The effects on fuel and electricity prices in those jurisdictions is being revealed to consumers as prices climb, whether that’s enough to alter voting choices remains to be seen. IMO I don’t think enough pain over a sustained timeframe has been delivered to make much difference, in another few years that may change.
They could just build a pipeline to the Southwest. But they won’t.
So pay $3 more per gallon and lump it.
“California Policymakers Ponder State Ownership of Oil Refineries”
I love it!! It worked like a charm in Venezuela, didn’t it?
The left destroys everything it touches or even looks at.
The Demsocialists are constantly “fixing” what “ain’t broke,” causing higher prices, lower quality, slowed delivery and overall dissatisfaction with what was formerly acceptable and functioning.
Let us pray this insanity stays in Commufornica, but you know NYCTMAVTMNDC will say “hold muh beer.”
Perhaps if they squeezed Gruesome’s head and refined it, their gas shortage would be solved.
The political DemoncRat elite in CA hate fossils fuels and wished for a fossil fuel free world. Be careful what you wish for.
According to GasBuddy, Regular sells for $2.45 in central Texas. Very approximately add $2.00 to the price of gasoline in Texas to get the price in California. Thus if one buys 15 gallons of regular, every week, you will save about $1,500 every year. Add to that, the cost of CA state income tax. My utilities run about 1/3 of what they were in the Bay Area. No wonder hordes of Californians are pouring into Texas. Unfortunately many of them will bring their CA habits to Texas.
California’s hostility to the internal combustion engine goes way back. In 1969 CA state senator Nicholas Petras (Democrat Alameda County) introduced SB 778 to prohibit the sale of all gasoline and Diesel engines by 1975. The bill passed the CA Senate! But died in the CA House. Of course Reagan would have vetoed it. Perhaps that’s why the it passed the CA Senate. They could virtue signal, knowing it would never take effect.
The CA government, as well as many of the residents are just plain nuts as well as stupid. When I was visiting open houses, I noticed how few books people owned. That was well before Amazon and electronic books.
The admitted CA strategy: hang on until the Democrats get back into power and then get a federal bailout as NYC got in 1975. A leap of faith to be sure. More likely the state will empty out except for the super wealthy, and the welfare dependent foreigners. Hmm… Some of the super wealthy are already leaving. No matter, somehow it will all work out.
“According to GasBuddy, Regular sells for $2.45 in central Texas.”
Go, central Texas. Fun fact: In 25+ years of running I-10, we’ve found that the lowest gas prices anywhere on the trip have almost always been around 1:00-2:00 on the San Antonio beltway, between Hollywood Park and Universal City, Today, the winner seems to be $2.19, a few miles off the freeway.
You can fill up your tank after the Selma cops give you a ticket.
Ship to the Bahamas, offload it, reload it (maybe even onto the same ship lol) and then transport it to Commieforna. Burning how many tons of No 2 ship fuel oil in the process???
Nuts! The kind of nuts Newsome plans to bring to the rest of the US.
Typical leftist government policy: Pursue leftist garbage ideas that create misery. Who cares what the people want?
The people voted for these Leftists multiple times. They shouldn’t complain.
Taking a hard look at Caliphornia’s “voting” siss tum I have my doubts the PEOPLE really have voted in all this madness. Then here is the uter corripion in the two state “houses”.
Let’s not forget that Newsom thinks he can be President one day.
I’d like to see a Harris/Newsom ticket. 😂
Talk about a republican landslide…I would think, anyway
Let’s us not forget Dominion Machines have a lot of election sway.
If it takes six weeks to count ballots, he can be President.
Of course none of what has happened in California is by accident. Democrats want to control where we live and how to limit freedom via mobility.
Wildfires raze small towns in the Sierra and onerous regulations make it impossible for working class to rebuild homes. That’s what democrats desire – no one living in environmentally ‘sensitive’ forest lands.
Same now holds true for wealthy Malibu or Palisades residents – democrats are opposed to people living along the beach. Of course wealthy residents there never dreamed that their fellow travelers would betray them in this way – doing so was to be reserved for the losers in the valley and Sierra Nevada mtns.
Any gas station in Springfield, Missouri last weekend: regular at $2.15/gallon.
Gavin’s economic tyranny is choice. I know there are good people in Cali., but not enough to overcome the open borders tyranny of stolen elctions by millions of ‘motor voter’ illegal aliens given a DL and automatic voter registration at government offices.
But trust the eXpErTs who insist we don’t no steenking proof of citizenship to vote because there is no voter fraud! See. Eezy peezy.
Nothing to see except…
We are at war. Prepare accordingly.
Last Wednesday I took a picture of gas prices at a Shell station in Kent Wa.
Reg Unleaded (cheap stuff) was 4.99/gal. I didn’t check Costco, but likely .20/gal cheaper.
Costco in Knoxville TN on Saturday was 2:39/gal.
Gas shortages in Ca is like grain shortages in the Ukraine. Only a communist regime could create such a situation. If you created a communist regime at the bottom of the ocean, they’d create a famine of salt water.
Reminds me of the joke about Islam and the Sahara Forest.
And Atlantis voters would still vote communist aka democrat/labor.
reality check:
probably smuggling in immigrants and weed
Newsome is a fraud. While his official government car is electric he has a luxury car collection that of course is mostly old fashioned gas powered models.
https://www.octagoninsurance.com/gavin-newsoms-car-collection-make-model-and-significance.html
In fine fashion, the average price of a gallon of regular in the state of Washington (moto: All things California but greener in every sense) is $4.158, courtesy of the AAA. A good chunk of that is due to a carbon tax – the sole accomplishment of which is to extract more money from the working stiffs so that the enlightened state officials can put it to nobler use..
It seems to me that the people of Commiefornia are getting what they voted for. Their politicians have not been at all opaque about energy policies and it’s only going to get more interesting since the last refinery in the State is going offline within the next couple of months.
Is there a reason a lot of restates don’t open more refineries?
Alabama has a lot of land that nobody lives on, it’s a pretty big state. Let California collapse under its own stupidity.
It’s not about ‘land’, its about receiving the raw oil to process in those refineries. The only realistic way to get the quantities necessary for a refinery to be profitable is with a major port. Alabama doesn’t fit the bill. Texas and Florida do, which is why most of the major refineries are there.
Then, of course, they have to ship out the refined gas to the end user, usually on trains.
It’s actually comical that California, which absolutely dominates the West Coast, has made it so unprofitable to refine gas there in any of its major ports that its more viable to process it in Texas refineries and then ship it overland to places like Nevada than to do it in California.
The port of Mobile, Alabama would like a word. Modern deep water port situated on I-65 to support North bound traffic and I-10 for East/West traffic plus rail lines and barge traffic up the Tenn/Tom Waterway running parallel to the Miss River.
That said IMO each State should be far more self reliant on energy production and fuel refining capacity for two major reasons:
1. the distributed, decentralized nature would be less vulnerable to nationwide disruption from accident or attack
2. closer to consumer reduces transport costs and creates burden sharing v allowing the outsourcing of potential environmental costs to other regions.
Newsome is desperate to try and pretend that gas prices aren’t high because of their leftist insanity because he has delusions of the presidency.
Of course he won’t actually do anything to remove insane Commiefornia regulations causing the oil producers to simply refuse to invest any more in their ridiculous ‘California blend’ and are shutting down refineries when they reach end of life.
So he’s just trying to temporarily mask the issue by importing this nonsense rather than actually solve the problem he and the rest of the lunatic left have created.
National security issue here: we have military bases in California that require fuel — gas, av gas, diesel, etc. Closing the refineries impacts that.
Wonder if Mr. Trump could order a pipeline built just for them?
Or – transport and storage facilities.
I’m sure Gruesome Newscum would attempt to halt or commandeer any pipeline.
Stages of Communist Denial
1. “It’s not happening at all and you are horrible evil person for saying it is!”
2. “It’s happening, but only a little, and you are horrible evil person for exaggerating!”
3. “It’s happening, but this issue is complicated, and you are horrible evil person for trying to exploit it!”
4. “It’s happening, and it is wonderful and beautiful, and you are horrible evil person for opposing it!
You’ve been studying the philosophies of Jen Psaki, and the subsequent toilet brush, though I doubt you’ve bought into them.
From time to time I enjoy opening GasBuddy on my phone and comparing the gas prices in Ehrenberg AZ and Blythe CA, a mere 5 miles apart on I-10.
Today, gas in Ehrenberg is selling at $2.67-2.69.
Blythe? $4.49 (off highway) to $4.99 (at the exits).
Many of the stations in Blythe have no reported prices at all. That indicates that almost nobody is buying there, as GasBuddy data is crowdsourced by its users. And why would anybody with half a brain, when you can travel a mere 5 miles to cut your fuel costs in HALF?
This tells me something else. This is not a “geographical” problem, it’s a political one. Clearly, the same tanker trucks that serve Ehrenberg could easily serve Blythe with the same gas… if it was permitted. But clearly, it isn’t.
My problem is, I live in a state near California that has a refinery, how long before someone figures out they can tanker gas from the refinery and probably make goodmoney
Something no one mentions, California probably has oil reserves, on/off shore that rivals Saudi or Venezuela
Did the people really vote for government they have
“how long before someone figures out they can tanker gas from the refinery’
I lost track — do they still have to tanker it into CA in an electric truck?
Believe it or not, CA residents are already desensitized to having most expensive gas in the country. Anything under $5 probably doesn’t get noticed.
And of course, Kalipornia has #1 highest gas tax.
I fail to see the problem here. California has all those windmills, solar farms and electric cars. What do they need petroleum fuel for?
Any way the wind blows, doesn’t really matter…
To me.
William Shatner covered this tune on one of his CD’s. Highly recommended.
Those windmills standing still or barely turning.
San Antonio, Texas, Sunday: $2.52/gal at the Valero across from Churchill High School.
Most Californians believe that loyalty to the ruling junta will protect them by providing various State mediated benefits. Until this breaks down they will vote as instructed, and really don’t care at all about what the rest of us think. When is does begin to fall apart, the Democrats will blame Trump and “the entitled rich” for the problems they have created for themselves, and the media will of course repeat and amplify these excuses as long as possible. Then they will increase wealth taxes exponentially, and the exodus will accelerate, resulting in attempts to confiscate any remaining assets as a departure tax. Once this gets shot down after it rises above their appellate level to control, the checks will eventually stop coming, and the sheep will be very confused about how this could be allowed to happen. At that point at least some of them may begin to realize how badly they have let themselves be misled, but most will just go right on tearing up whatever is left.