by Katy Grimes, E&E Legal Senior Media Fellow and California Globe Editor
As Appearing in the California Globe
California’s regulatory environment is so hostile, it is nearly impossible to dig, drill, develop, mine, log, graze grow, or manufacture anything
California’s own Chevron Oil company is moving its headquarters to Houston, Texas from San Ramon, California, the latest big business to flee the Golden State. Chevron is in good company joining X/Twitter, Space X, Oracle, Hewlett Packard, Charles Schwab, and Toyota Motor North America, to name a few of the mega-businesses leaving California because of the state’s leftist/Marxist politics and regulatory environment.
This comes as no surprise to anyone watching California Governor Gavin Newsom deflect from his own debacles and radical policies to the oil and gas industry, demonizing producers and refiners as evil polluters and price gougers, even filing a lawsuit last year against five of the largest oil companies, including Chevron.
Except, Newsom is wrong. Newsom claims that the state’s highest-in-the-nation gas taxes and prices are not what led to dramatically spiking gas/oil prices but because of price gouging by the oil industry. In May, Newsom even signed a gas price gouging law into place.
“We have created a regulatory environment in California where it is nearly impossible to dig, drill, develop, mine, log, graze, grow, or manufacture anything,” Ed Ring said in the Globe in January. And Gov. Newsom is orchestrating all of this despite California’s need for oil and gas. “Despite being a sunny, solar friendly state, with ample areas blessed with high wind, California still derives 50 percent of its total energy from crude oil. Another 34 percent comes from natural gas. This fossil fuel total for California energy, 84 percent, actually exceeds the world average for 2022, which – including coal – came in at 82 percent.”
