Fun facts: California has its own standard of cleaner-burning fuel blend. This alone makes CA gasoline more expensive than gasoline in other states. It has helped reduce nasty smog and air pollution present in bigger cities.
Then there are certain taxes passed on to fuel consumers. Special fuel blend + higher taxes = expensive gasoline ā½ļø
Arenāt there a few other states with the same gas now but not as high of prices? I remember back when I had tuned cars they always had a general US fuel map and a CA/nev/arizona(iirc the states right) fuel map. Not to meet emissions but bc of the fuel
Itās partially correct. The big difference is that there are no pipelines over the Rockies, so we donāt have access to less expensive domestic sources. Which means consumers get fudged here.
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And now one of the major refineries in LA is going to shutdown.
https://apnews.com/article/california-refinery-oil-phillips-66-shut-down-bbea1826c0d5d472273f97ad86b870f8
And taxes are going up again.
https://californiaglobe.com/fl/brace-for-impact-california-gas-prices-to-increase-in-2025/#:~:text=Additionally%2C%20the%20California%20excise%20tax,gallon%20from%20%240.599%20to%20%240.619.
And it was on the news pretty much every day. I saw an interesting report that said dirt in peopleās yards in LA had un safe levels of lead and that if you were going to let your kids play outside or grow anything you need to remove a large part of the topsoil as the dirt is akin to a superfund site.
It made news because people literally died from it. There were many more smog warnings telling people it wasnāt safe to exercise because the smog was particularly bad.
This isn't really true. California has its own requirements for fuel, but they don't burn any cleaner than the modern blends other states are using. The difference is nobody but California requires the blend they use so no out of state refiners bother making it. That means only a few in-state refiners (who are subject to California's expensive regulatory regime) make it, which drives prices up and, more importantly, makes California gas markets volatile. If one refinery goes down for maintenance or has an issue that takes it offline, prices spike far more than anywhere else in the nation.
It's true but ppl don't want to accept it. Pumping carbon into the atmosphere just passed the costs of it onto everyone in the world. A proper carbon tax should capture all of the negative externalities of the damage it does but people want to plug their ears and close their eyes and pretend they deserve cheap gas just because regardless of the harm they're doing.
The special blend is not special. It just clogs up engines and internal systems. More stuff left inside equals less stuff outside if it even is effective at all. Californians pay more for gas for no real reason. It's just another tax.
As someone who grew up in LA I have to disagree. We used to have such worse smog. I mean really, really much worse. When I was a kid we used to have many days a year when the smog was so bad we were not even allowed to play outside during lunch and recess at school.
We still have unhealthy alert days but they are not nearly as bad nor as often.
So did I. I grew up in 80ās and 90ās LA. Thatās because much of the industrial manufacturing base has left LA, which is compounded with less trucking and logistics, and also mainly because cars these days burn much more cleaner with the inception of computer-controlled fuel injection and catalytic converters. The type of fuel blend has VERY little to do with it. It was a virtue-signaling law at best.
Family friends have committed suicide due to the exodus to china of much of LAās manufacturing base.
Complete nonsense and it's straight up factual and science that CA's reformulated gasoline (the "special" blend) materially reduces VOCs, nitrogen oxide, sulfur dioxide and carbon monoxide, all by double digit percentages compared with "normal" gas.
>Thatās because much of the industrial manufacturing base has left LA, which is compounded with less trucking and logistics, and also mainly because cars these days burn much more cleaner with the inception of computer-controlled fuel injection and catalytic converters. The type of fuel blend has VERY little to do with it. It was a virtue-signaling law at best.
Mandating low-sulfur fuel is not virtue-signaling. Gas engines absolutely need low sulfur fuel for all of the emissions control technologies you're talking about to actually work as intended. Sulfur poisons catalytic converters. There can be some regen in limited circumstances but the easiest way to keep these complicated modern engines working is to just require refineries to keep sulfur out of gasoline to begin with. RVP also makes a significant difference in the legacy fleet which will continue to have evap fuel loss unlike the latest PZEVs which are designed to have zero evaporative fuel loss.
CARB and EPA effectively are just in lockstep on most things. There's not actually that much that changes between the two agencies. CARB is just much, much better funded and staffed relative to the size of its jurisdiction.
You want to talk about weird dumb shit yeah the rubber boots on CA gas nozzles are annoying and with modern cars there's no need for it because the onboard evap system in cars will make sure there's not a ton of gasoline vapors getting sent out into the atmosphere but things like that are more the exception than the rule.
The cars themselves have gotten cleaner burning and more efficient. Fuel injection made a big difference. Constant improvement in fuel injection has made ICE nearly pollutant free.
EPA regulations on companies have also made a huge impact.
The changes that were made 30+ years ago are what have had a positive effect on the improvements you see today.
Where are you coming up with this stuff? CA RFG set much stricter standards for the maximum amount of sulfur in gasoline (30 ppm vs 130 ppm) which is basically only good for gas engine vehicles. High-sulfur gasoline is notorious for trashing nikasil cylinder liners, increasing oil change interval intensity, requiring different engine oil formulations, etc. It also requires lower reid vapor pressure to reduce evaporative emissions in the summer. There is also a slight delta in olefin content between fed and CARB standards but honestly this is not that big a deal.
CA has no pipelines and the Jones Act means you aren't shipping crude from Texas to California unless the price delta is so big it's worth paying for all of that headache. Those two factors have far, far more to do with why gasoline is more expensive in CA than frankly minor differences in reformulated gasoline standards.
The reformulated gasoline standard they're talking about is almost identical to the EPA mandated reformulated gasoline standard that they force places like Dallas to use due to non-attainment of clean air act air quality standards.
We used to get āre-formulated gasā forced on us in the winter months living in St Louis. āIt burns cleaner!ā we were toldā except our gas mileage would drop almost by half. So burn more is better? More expensive too. This was back in the ā90ās so maybe itās better now.
One big reason why gas is so expensive in CA (plus OR and WA) is because there is no pipeline connection to the rest of the US. California has to import oil from other countries to make up the "inherent deficit". Here's a [map](https://atlas.eia.gov/datasets/eia::crude-oil-pipelines/explore?location=29.495823%2C-95.221420%2C3.66).
>Special fuel blend + higher taxes = expensive gasoline ā½ļø
You left "higher profit margins for O&G companies" out of the equation.
O&G companies will make more than 50% of their profits in Cali, because drivers will tolerate higher profits.
>A California teenager apparently found a simple solution to that problem, however,[Ā according to a report](https://www.sdsheriff.gov/Home/Components/News/News/3087/514)Ā from the San Diego County Sheriff's Office: **The 19-year-old suspect was arrested for stealing more than $40,000 worth of fuel from a Chevron station**,A California teenager apparently found a simple solution to that problem, however,[Ā according to a report](https://www.sdsheriff.gov/Home/Components/News/News/3087/514)Ā from the San Diego County Sheriff's Office: **The 19-year-old suspect was arrested for stealing more than $40,000 worth of fuel from a Chevron station,**Ā
>The suspect was arrested on December 2, but according to the sheriff's department, this was not a one-and-done kind of heist. **The teen, reportedly, had been making off with loads of gasoline over and over again for months.**
>
>"Employees told deputies the suspect was believed to have been visiting the gas station **at least twice a week since June 2024, stealing an estimated $2,000 worth of gasoline each time**," the statement reads. "He was able to manipulate the gas pumps using a credit card, which would indicate to the fuel system the pump was in use. **However, the transactions were never charged.**"
>Authorities were first notified about the thief on November 26, but didn't apprehend the suspect until early December, while responding to reports of a suspicious person at a Chevron. Deputies said the suspect matched the description of the previously reported thief, a**nd their suspensions were quickly validated when they found numerous large plastic containers including drum barrels and fuel canisters inside his**Ā [**GMC Yukon**](https://www.roadandtrack.com/news/a61914271/2025-gmc-yukon/)**, many of which were full of gasoline at the time of his arrest.**
>Police estimate that the suspect had been stealing gas from the same Chevron since June, and had **made off with a total value of around $42,000 worth of gasoline in that time**. The suspect was arrested under the suspicion of grand theft and booked into the San Diego Central Jail. Inmate records for San Diego County confirm that the 19-year-old is no longer in custody as of this story's publication.Ā
Sounds like a bug in the payment processing. The gas stations near me always withdrawal the set amount before allowing you to fill and then calculating the difference for billing.
\>The gas stations near me always withdrawal the set amount before allowing you to fill and then calculating the difference for billing.
sounds like a dumb system. just bill when the fill-up is done like how most stations do it.
This system prevents gas theft. You can't just fill up, not pay, and drive off. You can only start filling after you enter your card or pay a preauthorized amount inside with cash.
Some would charge like $50 to start filling, then correct that amount at the end of the transaction to actual so they are always covered for a normal amount of gas. If you had some pre-paid debit card with $50 on it, then fill up 200 gallons of fuel, the station only gets $50 š¤£
This is correct. Most station pre authorize for $100-$175. I get the notification on my phone all the time. The transaction that posts is always for the actual amount though.
Jesus that's how much they're pre authorizing where you are? My local chain does $1.01. It's allowed me to get a full tank with $2 in my account, do some food delivery or fill up the day before payday and deposit money before the overdraft hits.
Thatās different. If you tell the pump after you insert your card that you want $20 of gas, it will only pre authorize for $20 and thatās the max it will let you pump. If you just press enter without entering a limit as if you want to fill up a full tank, it will pre authorize $100+ and then adjust the correct amount based on what you pumped. You might recall a few years ago some gas stations increased the pre authorization to $250 when gas prices spiked during covid, and people with debit cards were pissed as the hold lasted a day or 2 sometimes.
This is one of the multiple reasons itās better to use credit cards.
I'm pretty sure if it can't get $100 it will do the max in your account. Have like $20.57 in your account and I bet the pump will stop on that exact number
you two are arguing two sides of the same coin.
Most gas station preauthorize a set amount, and then refund that and authorize what you were billed when the pump is hung up. Depending on your financial institution and how soon after purchasing gas you check your statement, you may or may not see the preauth charge in your bank statement. It's very easy to miss.
That's not how it works.
The gas station puts a temporary charge on your card before the filling starts, like $100 or $200, whatever, just to make sure the credit card is valid and is not maxed out.
Then after you finish filling gas, the final charge that the gas station will debit your credit card is the actual amount that you pumped.
Right, but it does this by first submitting the limit payment then subtracting so you don't have the situation above where the card declines after filling so nothing is billed.
I remember (before about 2009) when this wasnāt the case. You used to be able to just start filling and then you could walk in the station afterward and pay. Gas briefly spiked to ~$4/gal in most of the country and too many people just didnāt pay.
Not from America, but doesnāt that sound like a lot of hassle to prevent theft given that cameras are capturing every car and person and license plate that uses the pumps. If someone runs away without paying itās trivially easy to find out who did it.
I've not seen a pump that doesn't pre-charge when you fill. It's usually a 175-200 dollar charge then you actually get charged the amount you fill afterwards. It's why sometimes if you use a credit card you'll get a huge pending payment for a large amount that is fixed when it actually goes through.
What happens if the person pours $100 worth of gas and only has $5 in their account? If you let them fill up before attempting to bill (and without pre-authorizing some amount--often $75 or $100), then they could fill up with a card that gets declined after they have a tank full of gas.
That's why almost every pump pre-authorizes, contrary to what you believe. If it's a credit card, you generally never even see the pre-auth amount, but if it's a debit card it often subtracts the full pre-auth amount from your account, sometimes for a few days, until the batch gets reconciled later.
They don't bill before you pump, the guy you're responding to has it wrong.
They get a pre authorization from the credit card to make sure the credit card processor will accept the charge and has the balance available. They'll usually pre auth 50 or 100 (use to be $50 before gas prices went up, might be more than $100 now). After you're done pumping they'll bill your card for the proper amount.
This is done so you can't use a debit card with 0 dollars on it or a prepaid visa gift card (I'm not 100% sure these are allowed by gas stations anyway) with no money on it to pump gas. Since if they waited to bill until after you pumped, they can't take the gas back if the charge is declined.
Most gas stations in this day and age will run your card at the start, submitting an initial pending hold on your account for (typically) $200. Within minutes/hours, the actual amount charged replaces this pending $200 charge.
If the pump dispenses gas prior to initiating a pending charge, the gas station would be SOL if your card is declined and you drive away.
Here (Alberta) pay before you pump is mandatory.
The pump will preauthorize your card for whatever limit you select, dispense up to that amount of gas, then complete the transaction for the actual amount. Thereās no weird charge then refund thing, and the pump guarantees that youāll be able to pay before it dispenses anything.
If you go in to pay (e.g., paying cash or going to a station with really old pumps that donāt take payments) thereās the awkward pre-pay for what you think youāll need then go back in to get your change process.
The news agency likely glossed over the "how", intentionally. There are police videos on YouTube where people get caught opening the housing of the gas pump and jumpering out the enable/disable relays inside, allowing the actual pump itself to just *run* \- bypassing everything.
im calling bs, he would have to take 400 gallons weighing a ton for those numbers each time. Defiantly not in those 15 gallon drums in the pictures. someones jacking up the numbers a lot.
I thought this was gonna be some kid getting arrested for finding out how to fill his car/truck up for free.
But nope this dude was filling the truck of his bed up with drums of fuel, yeahhh thatāll do it
Not actually related to the OP, but since we are trying to say modern expensive fuel in CA helped LA with their smog problem Iāll leave this here: Modern cars that are labeled ULEV (first noticed Honda cars) run so clean, the air coming out of the tailpipe is cleaner than the dirty city air it takes in. Not all cars but some and technology and the green movement has improved every single car make and model as far as pollution goes
We arenāt seeing lower smog levels than in the 70 before the fuel had additives in it, we are seeing this because of modern automotive technology like fuel injection, catalytic, converters, and lots of other great technology that make new cars run very very clean, as far as tailpipe emissions go
Itās a popular thing in michigan. Stolen CC numbers and they do āFill Upsā where you pay them half of the cost and they fill your tank up with the credit card.
Someone stole a credit card and the owner of the stolen credit card is paying for the tank of gas. The person getting gas then pays the credit card thief half the value of the stolen gas.
Credit card thief gets clean cash they can spend anywhere, gas getting gets a 50% discount on their gas, credit card owner gets fucked (really the gas station gets fucked when the charge back goes through but good luck getting sympathy for a business on reddit).
I used to do it, got away with a shit ton of free gas. Just change from 87 or 89 to 89 or 91...right before it starts to pump. The money counter gets stuck but still pumps gas
If he was reselling it at a discount I don't get why he physically took the fuel and the overhead that comes with it.
It's already a common practice with credit card theft to have people pay you cash for $1/$2 a gallon. You handle the payment with the gas pump and then fill up the other persons car.
Oil companies have not stolen tax money but politicians have with fascist policies put out by democrats
California pays some of the highest taxes in the nation
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> And how much in taxpayer money have oil companies stolen from California teens (many of which don't even drive) in the form of subsidies and tax breaks through bribing politicians?
>
>
this is one thing people forget when comparing EVs to fossil fuel cars, the fossil fuel industry gets way more subsidies than EV tech lol
Transportation costs for all goods are typically subsidized via tax-breaks for the end goal reducing inflation and improving odds of re-election. Just look at how the SPR was deployed recently. Just look at the relative size of oil companies in the total stock market and you can figure out it's hardly the most profitable business model around.
He might not have been caught if he wasn't doing it at the same gas station every time. He was doing this for resale, that much is obvious, and he had a GMC Yukon. If he'd bought a cheap rickety powerboat, and rotated stations he could have likely gotten away for a lot longer. Nobody considers pumping 200 gallons of gas into a boat even remotely suspicious behavior (especially if you complain about the price while you're filling up), and San Diego has a climate and culture where someone having a boat out all year long is totally normal. The lack of rotating stations is what gets me, because if he did it my way, he'd just be a guy who fills his boat on the way to the marina once a month.
I'd have looked for other stores owned by the same business and at least penetration-tested this hack on them. It isn't like he was paying for gas, so even if he couldn't look it up online he could drive around and see who owns the stations based on the company name above the liquor license numbers posted on the outside. Then again, thinking things through thoroughly like that is likely why I don't have to do crime for a living and he's in jail for doing crime.
If he'd known better, he could have sold his exploit to the vendor and made a decent amount of legal money and had a huge line-item on his resume if he wanted to go into cybersecurity.
Smart, but dumb. If the teen had just used the hack for personal use it may have never been caught. But it was obviously a resell business and his greed got the better of him.
I wonder how he was unloading hundreds of gallons of gas a week. Was he reselling it to a business or just friends and neighbors who wanted discount gas?
He didnāt steal the gas, he found a zero day exploit and fucking used it. Sorry your gas station suck ass but if youāre giving away 40k worth of gas before fixing the issue, thatās on the gas station - not the kid. Bust the kid for a tank of gas, maybe.
There are gas station owners that get together in regions to raise the prices in California. The tax didn't raise it more than $.75. It's the greedy gas station owners that raised the price per gallon from $2.75 to $3 to $4.50 up to $7 depending where you live. It's crazy.
I remember the story of someone stealing gas at a card-lock (unattended commercial truck only gas station) by putting a large magnet on the outside of the gas pump in a specific spot which caused a relay to power up and dispense gas, they were only caught because they abused it and took soo much gas. If they just took what their car needed they would probably never have found out.
That's really how it happens in these stories. People just take it too far. Reminds me of the guy who was living rent free in a New York hotel. He was fine until he tried to claim ownership.
Yup. Filling up his tank would have been $100 per week tops. Thatās a rounding error on the books. They wouldāve assumed the scales needed to be recalibrated.
$2,000 worth of gasoline each timeā¦ How is this not a red flag from the 1st round? š
**Employees told deputies the suspect was believed to have been visiting the gas station at least twice a week since June 2024, stealing an estimated $2,000 worth of gasoline each time,ā the statement reads. āHe was able to manipulate the gas pumps using a credit card, which would indicate to the fuel system the pump was in use. However, the transactions were never charged.ā**
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