Senator Shannon Grove (R-Bakersfield) today announced the introduction of SB 13 to encourage the ethical use of oil in California which would help lower the price of gasoline and improve our energy security.
“California has placed our energy security into the hands of countries that are actively hostile to our state’s values when it comes to human rights, labor rights, and environmental rights,” said Senator Grove. “We need an ethically coherent approach to our energy production, and that starts with ensuring our oil is produced responsibly and maximizing our domestic production right here in California.”
California currently produces about 340,000 barrels of oil per day, of the state’s 1.45 million barrel daily need. About 45 percent of California’s oil imports come directly from the Amazon Rainforest in Ecuador, Brazil, Guyana, and Colombia. California should not be paying for the destruction of the Amazon Rainforest when that oil could instead come from inside California, produced by responsible, accountable, and highly regulated California oil companies.
SB 13 would implore the Legislature to realize that much of the crude oil imported into California comes from foreign nations with demonstrated human rights abuses, or foreign nations that have environmental standards lower than those in California. The measure would also require the Air Resources Board to report on its website the amount of particulate matter released into the air from the 600 tanker ships that import oil into the state in an effort to highlight the air quality impact from the state’s dependence on foreign oil.
“Much of the oil we import could be replaced by California’s in-state producers, providing California jobs, if we were allowed to expand production,” said Senator Grove. “Why would we import millions of barrels of oil from countries hostile to our values when we can produce climate compliant oil right here, while creating good paying jobs and improving our energy supply?”
The bill would require the Energy Commission to include in the breakdown of taxes and fees associated with a gallon of gas the cost to ship oil to California. Studies have shown that this adds $5 to $6 to the cost of a barrel of oil, or about 30 cents per gallon of gasoline.
“It is common sense that sending oil through a pipeline from Kern County to a Los Angeles refinery is a safer, and cheaper, way to produce gasoline in California,” said Senator Grove. “Expanding domestic oil production would remove the need for hundreds of polluting tanker ships to deliver oil to California, lower the cost of gasoline, and create good jobs for Californians.