Chevron Reduced Spending in California by Hundreds of Millions of Dollars since 2022

“Congratulations to California Gov. Gavin Newsom, who is succeeding at his goal of driving away fossil fuel investment and jobs, even while failing to reduce global CO2 emissions.”

Ouch. That is from the Wall Street Journal editorial board, as Chevron recently announced “that it is writing down its upstream assets in the Golden State owing to ‘continuing regulatory challenges.’”

In “Another California Gift to Texas: Chevron explains to Sacramento why the state is losing jobs and investment,” WSJ explains Chevron’s write-down acknowledges what the company has been telling California lawmakers for some time:

[Lawmakers] Their energy policies are making the state uninvestable. These include the state cap-and-trade program, low-carbon fuel standard, penalty on “excessive” refiner margins, and a 2022 law limiting new drilling within 3,200 feet of homes and schools.

The Globe has covered the Governor’s and California Democrats’ absurd efforts to kill off the oil and gas industry in the state.

In September, the Globe reported that California’s Attorney General and Gov. Newsom Sue 5 Oil Companies in Climate Change Shakedown, and noted, “This shakedown is one way to backfill the governor’s $31.5 billion budget deficit.”

The new law limiting new drilling within 3,200 feet of homes and schools was Senate Bill 1137, a gut-and-amend bill by Democrat Senators Lena Gonzalez and Monique Limón, which now requires 3,200-foot mandatory setbacks around California oil and gas wells.

Why now when oil production has responsibly occurred in Los Angeles County and around the state for more than 100 years?

Just in the City of Los Angeles:

• there are 26 oil and gas fields that intersect city boundaries, and 5,229 oil and gas wells, according to the CA DOGGR and verified by the City’s Petroleum Administrator.
• There are approximately 819 active, 296 idle, 3,181 plugged, and 933 buried wells.
• There are oil and gas facilities in nearly every section of the 503 square miles of the City.
• The City of Los Angeles produces 2% of California’s total production.

September 2022, Gov. Newsom signed a package of “sweeping legislation” to achieve statewide carbon neutrality as soon as possible, and no later than 2045, by establishing an 85% emissions reduction target, capping oil wells, slowing oil and gas permitting, making it impossible to increase refining capacity, and entirely phasing out oil and gas starting in two years. And that’s just the start.

In addition to California’s gas taxes, state regulations create a more demanding and exacting process on oil and gas as well.

In May, Newsom blurted out that he blames California’s now-annual-wildfires on fossil fuel companies.

Wasn’t it only a couple of years ago the governor accused PG&E of causing wildfires, and placing profits over safety?

So now it’s fossil fuel companies? Governor Shapeshifter is trying to blame fossil fuel companies for a deadly crisis the government created by imposing environmental laws that have made forest management nearly impossible. And, with his oil and gas ban looming in the near future, he clearly needs a boogey man.

Newsom also conveniently bases his oil company accusation on a conveniently timed study by the Union of Concerned Scientists, a “leading activist group promoting left-wing public policy approaches targeting alleged catastrophic man-made global warming,” Influence Watch reported. “The group’s websites makes extreme and apocalyptic predictions about the future of the Earth’s climate, attributing a supposed increase in ‘wildfires, flooding, [and] extreme heat and drought’ to climate change and projecting the disappearance of ‘entire island nations.’”

The new study blames “a rise in vapor pressure deficit (VPD), a measure of the atmosphere’s drying power that is significantly influenced by human-caused climate change.”

The study’s authors claim “Previous research has quantified the contribution of carbon emissions traced back to a set of 88 major fossil fuel producers and cement manufacturers to historical global mean temperature rise.”

As for the WSJ op ed:

California policies have made it “riskier than investing in other states, with projects being lower in quality and higher in cost,” Chevron’s Americas Products business president Andy Walz wrote last month in a filing with the California Energy Commission. “Chevron alone has reduced spending in California by hundreds of millions of dollars since 2022.”

“We have rejected capital projects” and canceled some “due to permitting challenges,” Mr. Walz noted, adding that California’s “arbitrary attacks on a disfavored industry . . . signal to every industry, entrepreneur, manufacturer, and employer that California is closed for business.”

As Newsom’s and Bonta’s lawsuit moves forward, the discovery phase will be delicious when they have to produce actual evidence that 5 oil companies have caused wildfires, heat waves, snow storms, flooding, wind and rain in California.

This is another case of the “the Emperor has no clothes.” The AG is suing over what he and other leftists claim is “settled science,” but real scientists call Bonta’s and Newsom’s claims pseudoscience, noting that the ever changing climate has other causes.

The Globe reported in August, a little over one year ago, California Governor Gavin Newsom announced his pompous plan for addressing “California’s hotter, drier future:”

“Hotter and drier weather conditions spurred by climate change could reduce California’s water supply by up to 10 percent by the year 2040. To replace and replenish what we will lose to thirstier soils, vegetation, and the atmosphere, Governor Gavin Newsom has announced California’s latest actions to increase water supply and adapt to more extreme weather patterns caused by climate change.”

Think about that arrogant statement – as if California politicians are going to stop hot weather. But the joke was on the governor with record rainfall and snowfall in the winter of 2023… except that didn’t stop him. Since then, we’ve been barraged with absurd radio advertisements warning us, “now that we face a hotter, dryer future…” and “let’s make conservation a way of life,” providing helpful hints about saving water.

Meanwhile, Chevron is disinvesting in California. Gov. Gavin Newsom is proving through his anti-business policies that California is not too big to fail.