California’s new law imposing a profit margin cap on state oil refineries is the first in the nation to penalize companies for hiking prices at the gas pump. With new and potentially stringent reporting requirements for companies like Chevron, PBF Energy, Marathon, Phillips 66 and Valero, Gov. Gavin Newsom and lawmakers hailed it as proof they could take on Big Oil and win. And plenty of climate and environmental justice groups went to bat for the bill publicly.
Yet, some of those groups say they’re disillusioned by how the law is being implemented, claiming that it takes an ineffective approach to winding down the state’s oil refineries, some of them more than a century old, and could slow down the state’s progress towards its climate goals. It wasn’t supposed to be that way: Climate groups had believed they secured the support of the governor in pushing for a broad, whole-of-government plan to phase out refined fossil fuels in the law. But the version of the legislation that passed delays hard and urgent choices about undoing massive fossil fuel infrastructure, while keeping the door open for conversions to biofuels and hydrogen refineries — which have local pollution and climate impacts.
