Gasoline Shortages in Southern California

Gasoline prices in San Diego. Photo: Glenn Batuyong, Creative Commons license

A series of disruptions in petroleum refineries in Southern California has resulted in surging gasoline prices in recent days and spot shortages.

A New York Times article Saturday morning (10/6/12) described makeshift signs at gas stations that had run out of gasoline altogether and prices that had spiked by as much as 20 cents per gallon overnight at others. Already, California gasoline prices were the highest in the nation: an average of $4.49 per gallon, 70¢ above the national average.

The problems resulted from an August 6th fire at a Chevron refinery in Richmond, California that produces 245,000 gallons of gasoline per day. Then there was a power outage last Monday at ExxonMobil’s Torrance, California refinery, which produces 195,000 gallons of gasoline per day.

While both refineries were coming back to normal, the perturbations were enough to disrupt the flow the our lifeblood gasoline.

From a resilience standpoint, this illustrates the inherent vulnerabilities in our fuel system. Just-in-time production and delivery makes for wonderful economic efficiencies, but it means that seemingly modest hiccups can result in significant interruptions. That’s a point made in a book I’m currently reading: Resilience Thinking by Brian Walter and David Salt.

Residents in the LA area who can walk to a local store, ride a bike to the bookstore today, or take public transit to work will find themselves at a distinct advantage today as they avoid the gas lines and dramatic price increase. And a new homeowner who has to drive 40 minutes from the outer suburbs for just about anything just might be questioning why he or she opted for that tract home so far away over the infill house in a walkable town center.

It makes one think….

Along with founding the Resilient Design Institute in 2012, Alex is founder of BuildingGreen, Inc. and executive editor of Environmental Building News. To keep up with his latest articles and musings, you can sign up for his Twitter feed.

David W. Orr, Ph.D

David W. Orr is Paul Sears Distinguished Professor of Environmental Studies & Politics, Emeritus. He also served as “Counselor to the President” of Oberlin College for ten years. He is the author of eight books, including Dangerous Years: Climate Change and the Long Emergency (Yale, 2016) and Down to the Wire: Confronting Climate Collapse (Oxford, 2009) and co-editor of three others. He has authored over 220 articles, reviews, book chapters, and professional publications. In the past twenty-five years he has served as a board member or adviser to ten foundations and on the Boards of many organizations including the Rocky Mountain Institute, Bioneers, and the Aldo Leopold Foundation.

He is currently a Trustee of the Alliance for Sustainable Colorado, Children and Nature Network, and the WorldWatch Institute. He has been awarded nine honorary degrees and a dozen other awards including a Lyndhurst Prize, a National Achievement Award from the National Wildlife Federation, leadership awards from the U.S. Green Building Council (2014) and from Second Nature (2012), and a lifetime achievement award from Green Energy Ohio and the North American Association for Environmental Education. He has lectured at hundreds of colleges and universities throughout the U.S., Europe, Latin America, and Asia. He headed the effort to design, fund, and build the Adam Joseph Lewis Center, which was named by an AIA panel in 2010 as “the most important green building of the past thirty years,” as “one of thirty milestone buildings of the twentieth century” by the U.S. Department of Energy, and as one of “52 game-changing buildings of the past 170 years” by the editors of Building Design +Construction in January, 2016. He was instrumental in the design and funding of the Peter B. Lewis Gateway Center. He is the founder of the Oberlin Project and a founder of the journal Solutions. His current work is on the state of American democracy.

One thought on “Gasoline Shortages in Southern California”

Angel says:

October 10, 2012 at 3:13 pm

Similar to our electric grid where a disruption at a single power plant is felt throughout a metropolitan area. Pursuing various alternative energy options and different delivery systems makes for a resilient design

Loading...