California set to regulate profit margins for gasoline refiners

By Erwin Seba

(Reuters) – California can begin regulating how much profit the state’s oil refiners can earn on selling gasoline beginning this summer under that Governor Gavin Newsom signed into law on Tuesday.

“With this legislation, we’re ending the oil industry’s days of operating in the shadows,” said Newsom, a Democrat, after signing the bill. Oil companies had opposed the measure that starting June 26 empowers the California Energy Commission to set a state gross gasoline refining profit margin, and to levy penalties for exceeding it.

“California took on Big Oil and won. We’re not only protecting families, we’re also loosening the vice grip Big Oil has had on our politics for the last 100 years.”

Chevron (NYSE:), the largest oil refiner by volume in the state, called the measure “a step backward” and its approval “likely to result in less reliable, less affordable fuel for state motorists,” said spokesperson Ross Allen.

Energy investment firm Tudor Pickering & Holt said this week that independent refiner PBF Energy (NYSE:) has the largest single exposure in the California market with 32% of its refining capacity in the state.

PBF did not respond to a request for comment.

“Refiners will also have to report more information to the watchdog,” said Matthew Blair, Tudor Pickering’s managing director of refiners, chemicals, and renewable fuels research.

California is the largest U.S. market for motor fuels but has some of the highest retail prices. It is isolated from Gulf Coast and Midwest refining centers, so is more reliant on a shrinking number of West Coast refineries and fuel imports from Asia and Europe.

Those limits make the state vulnerable to plant outages and spikes in prices such as the summer and fall of 2022.

The law will do nothing to increase gasoline supply to the West Coast, said John Auers, managing director of Refined Fuels Analytics. “It won’t do any good and it will do harm.”

The uncertainty of possible penalties will weigh on the industry, said David Hackett, chairman of fuels consulting firm Stillwater Associates.

“I think that’s exactly what they are doing: Death by a thousand cuts.”