California Rebuked For Delegating Environmental Stewardship

(February 10, 2020) — An op-ed in Eurasia Review rebukes California for delegating its environmental stewardship to proxies. Noted is that the Golden State, with the world’s fifth-largest economy, ballyhoos its green leadership. However, its love of importing electricity and oil exposes its passion to green-up at any cost to fobbing off environmental guardianship to other countries and states that have significantly less controls.

While other states have encouraged exploration and development efforts that have contributed to the U.S. emerging as a leading energy producer and exporter, California’s leaders “believe it is better to import crude oil instead of increasing in-state crude oil production from the largest shale reserves and ocean crude oil reserves in the country, found in the Monterey Shale and Pacific Ocean.” This is despite California being an “energy island” inhabited by about 40 million with no pipelines over the Sierra Nevada Mountains.

There are about two billion barrels offshore Santa Barbara that are discovered, estimated, and producible, but remain subject to state and federal moratoria on production. The larger reserves are within seven miles of the coast. This number is significant in that, with recently proven slant-drilling technology, formations within seven miles are accessible mostly from land-based rigs with no offshore spill risk.

With the no-exploration philosophy within the state, California, rather than keeping oil contained and controlled onshore, instead imports without discussing the nautical miles and weeks vessels need to travel to reach port. For example, the distance from oil-rich Saudi Arabia to Long Beach alone is nearly 9912 nautical miles via the Suez Canal and the Panama Canal. The miles and cost per nautical mile a ship must travel to bring crude to California is huge, but California, rather than produce its own oil from some of the largest U.S. reserves in-state, supports and pays for imports.

Eurasia Review comments that that the silence from California’s leadership is deafening in regard to the dangers of exposing marine life to the logistics of importing oil into California from afar, and the wastage of energy to get that oil from foreign countries to West Coast ports. “Seems that the green peoples’ fake pollution standards do not apply outside the borders of the state.” The periodical adds that “California loves to view energy with tunnel vision, believing that Californians only breathe California air and not the air in the world’s atmosphere—only seeing the clean in front of their eyes while being oblivious to the negative impact to the world’s emissions and environment that result from importing oil rather than producing it.”

Further, California imports up to 29% of its electricity because it cannot generate enough to meet its demands. That imported electricity comes at higher costs that are borne by residents and businesses alike. And with the planned shuttering of both nuclear and gas-fired generating plants on the near horizon in favor of renewable generation being brought onboard, the need to import more electricity every year will escalate to plug gaps due to the intermittent nature of solar and wind power.

In addition to importing electricity, the California energy island’s love of foreign crude oil is obvious as the state increased imports from foreign countries from 5% in 1992 to 57% in 2018, costing California more than $32 billion a year. That’s $60 million being paid to oil-rich countries every day. “California’s green movement dark secret about importing the electricity and oil demands for the fifth-largest economy in the world is that California is directly responsible as a major contributor of pollution and higher emissions from states and countries with less environmental controls than California,” Eurasia Review observes.

In addition, the California green passion has resulted in the exorbitant electricity and fuel costs it imposes on its 40 million residents by importing electricity and crude oil. “Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti, Gov. Gavin Newsom, the Green People’s pollution standards, and the Democratic-controlled state legislature are playing popularity contests with the facts and hiding the truth about importing electricity and oil demands. Such actions delegate the states’ responsibility for environmental stewardship to other countries and states that have significantly less environmental controls than California.”

(SOURCE: The

February 10, 2020. Available by subscription)