How the Jones Act ruined my California vacation Opinion [View all]

The sticker shock hit within the first hour of my recent holiday weekend vacation to San Francisco, one of the world’s most expensive cities.

Weaving through rush hour traffic past the stucco homes of the Sunset District neighborhood, blocks away from the verdant jewel that is Golden Gate Park, I spotted an Arco station advertising regular gasoline at $4.56 per gallon.

I won’t dare tiptoe onto any “don’t California my Texas” minefields or even attempt to compare the wildly different aesthetics, cultures and political identities of these two major cities. I’ll just say that Houston has an undisputed edge if you drive a gas-powered vehicle. You can fill up at the Kroger gas station two miles from my home for a mere $2.40 per gallon.

There are many reasons for this disparity at the pump. California has the highest gas tax in the nation and stringent environmental regulations that require cars to use a unique blend of gasoline, which produces fewer carbon emissions and less air pollution but is more expensive to produce.

But it’s also a simple matter of proximity. In Houston, you can throw a pebble and hit an oil refinery. California only has a small handful of refineries, mostly near Los Angeles, making the state more reliant on imported oil and gas. Bloomberg reported on Monday that California is even importing more of its gasoline from the Bahamas, an expensive, Magellan-esque shipping route through the Panama Canal that adds to the high gas prices for consumers.

https://www.houstonchronicle.com/opinion/outlook/article/jones-act-ruined-california-vacation-opinion-21367829.php