The skies over northern California have been filled with toxic smoke of one description or another this past year, from lithium-ion storage facilities to now an oil refinery fire that has just erupted this morning.
I read a Xweet earlier that said the area was ‘snakebit,’ and you could certainly look at it that way. Nothing but bad news, with most of it self-induced and all of it energy-related in some manner.
Energy company Valero has been signaling for over six months that it was seriously considering shuttering two of its California refineries. The first word of their intentions came last October, and only a week after Phillips 66 announced they were going to close down their 100-year-old refinery outside of Los Angeles. All of these rather drastic moves were blamed on Gov. Gavin Newsom and the CA legislature’s hostile climate for any fossil…
