California needs about 10 new power plants pronto just to dig itself out of the huge hole it's in with electricity. It's May, for heaven's sake, and last week saw two days of rolling blackouts in the Golden State. And then we have gasoline. Pretty much if any one of them has a fire, or is down for maintenance, or explodes, it's bad news. Even if OPEC were pumping oil like mad, which it isn't, we couldn't refine it all fast enough.
Gasoline is a commodity.
It operates in a commodity market. So we talk about conserving, and it all sounds so warm and fuzzy and good. But at the end of the day, we need more refineries. We need more domestic supply. We need more power plants.