Green Treason

If a policy aids a country's enemies is it treason? Also a note on Chinese oil

This is kind of two posts in one, because they are sort of connected.

Treason and Fossil Fuels

Ever since the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 it has been clear that giving your enemies or geopolitical rivals control over your energy supply is … how shall we put it? suboptimal.

See Europe in general and Germany in particular with respect to oil and gas from Russia as an example.

Now, thanks to Operation Epic Furry Fury, that same green inspired insanity is going to hit California right in the nuts gas tank.

As has been noted by many, California has lost something like 50% of the refineries it had once upon a time. Now that Valero’s Benicia refinery has shut, it is down to 11 from 23 refineries in 2000. In fact thanks to Valero and Phillips shutting refineries down in the last few months California’s refining capacity has dropped 20% compared to a year ago.

Since California’s demand for gasoline, diesel etc. has not declined by 20% California needs to get its refined oil product from somewhere else. That has led to idiocies such as the Bahamas (a noted oil producer NOT) providing almost 40% of California’s requirements recently. Japan, India and South Korea have also contributed:

Jet fuel imports surged to a five-year high of 90,000 b/d in November, largely on the back of sharp increases from Japan. Gasoline imports reached record highs as well, averaging almost 50,000 b/d in 2025, sourced mainly from India, South Korea and more recently Japan.

All of this, while stupid, is not deadly serious as long as there are no disruptions to global oil supplies.

And, um, well, sadly, as we are all well aware, there is currently a major disruption in global oil supplies.

China has announced it is forbidding all oil exports. I have not seen any announcement from Japan but given that Japan imports over 90% of its oil from the gulf, I doubt Japan is going to be selling any more jet fuel to California either even though it has something like eight months supply stockpiled. Much the same goes for S Korea and probably India - though India may temporarily do OK because it is temporarily being allowed to purchase the shadow fleet oil hanging around in various tankers. Either way, when push come to shove, countries want their refineries to produce oil for domestic consumption first and exports across the Pacific to California are heavily de-prioritized.

The USA as a whole is a net oil exporter, that’s the source of the Bahamian oil California imports, but California is, for reasons, almost entirely removed from the rest of the US oil market. This is partly by design in that, AIUI, plans to build an oil pipeline from the gulf/Texas to California have been blocked hard by Californian regulators and their environmental NGO allies. You might ask why the US Gulf oil can’t be shipped to California. That’s where the Jones Act gets to do its thing. There are hardly any Jones Act compliant tankers and most of them are busy delivering Alaskan oil to Hawaii and the US West Coast already. There simply isn’t any spare capacity in the Jones Act compliant tanker fleet which is why oil to California from the US Gulf producers goes to refineries in the Bahamas and is then shipped on from there in tankers passing through the Panama Canal to California.

In general one would be tempted to tell California to suck it up buttercup and think about electing some saner politicians ASAP. However, despite all the billionaires and companies fleeing the state, California is in fact critical to the US economy thanks to the extensive ports in Los Angeles, Long Beach and so on. Not forgetting the agriculture of the central valley that feeds more than just California. Every import and export that passes through those ports is transport to them, on the landward side, diesel powered trains and trucks and likewise every tomato, garlic, raisin, rice grain and so on from the California’s fields goes to its consumers on diesel powered trucks and trains. So if the price or availability of diesel worsens that increases the cost of those foodstuffs, imports and exports. As it is diesel in California is some 50% more expensive (~$6/gal vs $4) than in the central US¹ and, although California recently passed some law mandating that refiners hold some stock of refined product, it doesn’t look the amount actually stockpiled is anywhere near the several months worth that Japan (and probably China - see below) has.

California is also critical for the US military in the Pacific thanks to the collection of US Navy and USMC assets in Southern California as well as numerous other locations elsewhere such as Travis AFB. Travis AFB, by the way, used to be supplied jet fuel via a dedicated pipeline from the now closed Benicia refinery.

It is this importance that makes me wonder whether passing laws that make the oil industry impossible in California rise to the level of actual treason against the US as a whole. In the event that the West Taiwanese decide to get really sporty, San Diego is going to need to be refueling lots of naval vessels and air force bases like Travis are going to be needed to send out patrols as well as supplies to bases in Guam and so on. Artificially and gratuitously restricting supplies by government fiat surely looks to me like giving “aid and comfort” to enemies of the US.

True we are not yet (and hopefully won’t ever be) at war against West Taiwan, but if that happens and if it turns out that lack of fuel in San Diego limits the capability of the USN to deploy then I would think treason charges could be laid against all the politicians and bureaucrats who have overseen the mess that is the current California oil market. Sadly because the US constitution prohibits cruel and unusual punishments, these wastes of oxygen will not be hung, drawn and quartered or any of the other punishments that Britain has traditionally applied to traitors. But one can dream.

Anyway enough about treasonous greenies.

How Much Oil Does China Actually Have?

The announcement that the Chicoms were banning oil exports coming so soon after war broke out in the Middle East led me to wonder just how much oil they actually have.

According to this article and links from it

China’s oil stockpiles and crude in storage in Asia and on the water leave it well positioned to weather a multi-month disruption. As of early January, China had 1.206 billion barrels of oil in storage onshore, which would cover 104 days of net crude oil imports at the 2025 level.

There also are likely ample supplies of Venezuelan and Iranian crudes on the water. In early January, more than 29 million barrels of Venezuelan crude and 170 million barrels of Iranian crude and condensate were on tankers or floating storage. There are also Iranian barrels in bonded storage in Chinese ports.

That sounds like a lot. 3 1/2 months or so. But I wonder if it’s all actually there. Failing to actually fill an oil reserve and instead selling the oil is an obvious corruption path for middle managers in the right places. It might also help China’s small domestic oil production industry. That industry produced some 3,850 million barrels of oil (216.05 million tons) last year, slightly above the year before and which if I do the sums from this article was a record level.

In 2024, China produced 213 million tons (4.27 million bpd) of crude oil, virtually equaling the historical peak of 215 million tons (4.32 million bpd) in 2015.^[xxvii] After setting that production record, China’s oil output fell to 189 million tons (3.8 million bpd) in 2018.[xxviii] This decline appears to have alarmed China’s leader Xi Jinping. In July of that year he issued an instruction to “vigorously increase exploration and development efforts to ensure national energy security.”^[xxix] China’s national oil companies subsequently developed their first-ever seven-year action plans to increase domestic reserves and production for the period 2019-2025.^[xxx] To this end, the companies invested heavily in exploration and production.^[xxxi] China’s oil output grew by almost 500,000 bpd.^[xxxii]

I wonder whether the domestic production really increased over the last few years, or whether it turned out to be easier to pretend it did and “borrow” oil from the long term stockpiles. Total domestic production is a fraction of a percent of consumption so it would be easy to goose that number and meet the goals. But once you’ve borrowed oil for one reason, it becomes easy to borrow it for other more directly individually profitable reasons.

Lack of belief in those official statistics may well explain why the West Taiwanese have halted all exports of refined oil products – they just had some people who are not an actual petroleum company managers do an audit and noticed that instead of 1.2 trillion barrels they were supposed to have that actually had significantly less. Perhaps as little as half the amount.

This is purely speculation, but a country with 3.5 months of oil stockpiled ought to be a little more confident even if it has just seen a hit on cheap imports. I mean, yes you do want to think about reducing consumption and make plans but an announcement less than a week after war starts seems extremely conservative. On the other hand one with rather less reserves than that, say less than a couple of months, might be rather more concerned that the current week or so of interruption could extend to where oil stocks look very low.

On the gripping hand, to return to California, I very much doubt that California has even a month’s supply stockpiled. If disruptions continue then California may be looking at rationing in a week or three.

1. Not a scientific thing, I just looked a prices according to google maps at a handful of gas stations in Texas, Kansas and Los Angeles. Prices in the first two were on the order of $4 and in the latter $6 but I didn’t look hard so I could have just got lucky/unlucky regarding prices.