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Valero to shut Benicia refinery, which generates about 12% of the fuel in California 

By: De_Composed in GRITZ | Recommend this post (2)
Thu, 01 May 25 7:54 PM | 12 view(s)
Boardmark this board | Grits Breakfast of Champeens! 		Msg. 07627 of 07654
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Re: “It's over $5.00 at the regular stations here in SoCal, which is about 60 cents higher than when Trump took office in January. So much for the price of gas going down.”
- oldCADuser #msg-1263868  

OCU doesn't understand why his gas prices are up. I don't know about you guys, but I paid $2.67 last week. That's a hefty decrease from what it was in the Biden daze. Whatever's wrong in California, it's not President Trump's doing.


April 30, 2025

California Losing Important Valero Oil Refinery, Exclusive Supplier of Travis AFB

Valero to shut Benicia refinery, which generates about 12% of the fuel in California. The reason: A toxic regulatory environment and high costs.

by Leslie Eastman
LegalInsurrection.com


It turns out the biggest casualty in California’s War on Fossil Fuels may be our national security.

Legal Insurrection readers may recall that last year, Governor Gavin Newsom signed into law a measure ordering energy producers to stockpile gasoline, despite pushback from industry.

Soon after, Phillips 66 announced plans to stop operations at its Los Angeles-area refinery in the fourth quarter of 2025. Meanwhile, energy giant Chevron moved its headquarters to Texas, citing high taxes and burdensome regulations.

Now Valero Energy Corporation has announced plans to close its Benicia oil refinery, located just northeast of San Francisco, by the end of April 2026.

This facility, which processes between 145,000 and 170,000 barrels of crude oil per day, has been a significant economic engine for the city of Benicia and a major supplier of gasoline, diesel, jet fuel, and asphalt for the California market.

The challenging regulatory environment in the state that is hostile to fossil fuels was cited as a reason.
Valero CEO Lane Riggs cited challenging regulatory and enforcement environment for the decision to cease operations.

Benicia’s closure is the latest in a series of planned refinery shutdowns in the state. In October, Phillips 66 (PSX.N), opens new tab said it would shutter its Los Angeles-area refinery by the end of this year. Phillips 66 last year converted its Rodeo refinery into a renewables production facility.

Gasoline prices in California are among the highest in the country due to the state’s reliance on imports to offset declining supplies.
Keep in mind, California’s total oil consumption averages approximately 1.4 million barrels per day. This means the Benicia refinery processes about 12% of the oil California uses, so the shut-down will have significant impact on the state and the region.

However, Arizona and Nevada are likely to feel the impact of the closure as well.
Because California is an “energy island,” meeting demand for California and the parts of Nevada and Arizona that rely on its refineries will require costly imports of volatile fuel by emissions-heavy tanker ships.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom has long blamed rising gas prices on refiners’ “price gouging,” but even though his own administration has said that it has no found no evidence of such, he called a special legislative session last year to pass new refinery regulations that both Democratic and Republican governors of neighboring states warned would lead to price hikes and supply shortages.

Now, with the closure announcement, the warnings from the energy industry and regional leaders are coming to fruition.

…With the state’s ban on the sale of new gas-powered cars in 2035, new refineries are not being built, leaving remaining refineries operating at nearly 100% capacity at all times. As a result, outages at even a single refinery result in spikes in gas prices.
As a reminder, the new regulations would require energy companies to stockpile gasoline. Furthermore, our state legislature was keen on allowing wildfire victims to sue energy companies due to ‘climate crisis’ claims.

But it turns out there is a serious national security consideration in this closure. The Valero refinery is the exclusive supplier of jet fuel to nearby Travis Air Force Base, which it delivers through a direct pipeline.
“If that is stopped, what does that mean to the base?” Young said. “Travis uses an amazing amount of fuel to fly all their planes, much more than can be easily replaced, and certainly not replaced within a year. So I think that this becomes a matter of real concern to the Defense Department and it’s potentially a national security issue.”

Valero dropped its bombshell April 16 announcement roughly six months after regional and state air regulators fined the company a record $82 million for secretly exceeding toxic emissions standards for at least 15 years. And last month, city leaders voted unanimously to impose moderate new safety regulations on the facility.
The fact that it is a national security issue may give the Trump administration the excuse it needs to kill the state’s inane environmental programs, replacing them with more reasonable and achievable federal ones.

Finally, Valero contributed about 20% of Benicia’s tax base. That city will now have to find a way to tighten the belt, as it is very unlikely a new business will swoop in and replace the monies Valero paid.

The pain has not really begun, as we haven’t fully entered the FO phase of the FAFO cycle. Hopefully, there will be a solution to the situation quickly, as I suspect California’s plans to run its own refineries will end in complete failure.

http://legalinsurrection.com/2025/04/california-losing-important-valero-oil-refinery-exclusive-supplier-of-travis-afb/

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