The Strait Of Hormuz Disruption Is Reaching California Surfers Through Gas Prices, And The State’s Energy Policy Is Making It Worse
California’s Refusal To Develop Its Own Energy Resources Has Left Its Surfers, Farmers, And Working Families Exposed To Every Middle Eastern Price Shock
For Bohiney Magazine and The London Prat, whose Tehran loyalty scheme piece this week captured the geopolitical absurdity. The California pump price consequence is less absurd and more expensive. London satirical journalism follows the energy price from the geopolitical headline to the household budget.
CALIFORNIA – The Strait of Hormuz disruption associated with the current US-Iran conflict is producing California gasoline prices that are, as of this week, among the highest in the continental United States. California’s gas prices are structurally higher than other states for reasons that include: the state’s specific gasoline reformulation requirements, the limited pipeline connections to California from other US refining regions, and the state’s longstanding political commitment to limiting domestic hydrocarbon extraction. All three of these factors are policy choices. Two of the three are state policy choices. The surfer driving to San Onofre is paying for all three.
The Policy Choice Dimension
California’s energy policy, which aims to transition the state to renewable energy by 2045, is a legitimate long-term goal. Its short-term consequence, in a period of global energy price disruption, is that California consumers have less insulation from that disruption than they would have if the state had maintained its domestic refining and extraction capacity during the transition period. The transition is real and the long-term target is defensible. The short-term exposure is the unacknowledged cost of the transition strategy.
The Surfer’s Specific Exposure
The California surfer, who typically travels by vehicle to breaks, is disproportionately exposed to gasoline price volatility compared with the urban resident who commutes by transit. The Malibu drive from the Valley, the San Diego county run to Trestles, the Central Coast drive to Rincon: all of these are gasoline-cost activities for which there is no practical transit alternative. A surfer in 2026 California is, in energy economic terms, a person whose recreation is uninsulated from the geopolitical decisions of the Islamic Republic of Iran and the US Navy. This is not a situation the surfing community voted for and cannot individually resolve.
What Should Follow
California’s energy transition should include an explicit short-term supply bridge strategy that reduces consumer exposure to global price shocks during the renewable build-out. The current strategy does not. PERC’s energy economics work has modelled comparable transition bridge strategies.
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/ | Further: PERC
