Kevin Kiley: “Today, I voted for and the House passed the REFINER Act. This is an important piece of legislation that is designed to…”

“Today, I voted for and the House passed the REFINER Act. This is an important piece of legislation that is designed to identify obstacles to expanding refining capacity in the United States, and it is designed to promote energy independence. Before we go through exactly what the bill does, I wanted to make clear why this is so important for those of us in California. California is seeing the closure of two of its refineries, Phillips 66 and Valero, which represent a significant chunk of our State's overall refining capacity. Now, we already pay the highest gas prices of any State in the country. We also have electricity prices that have gone up by 34 percent over the last several years, The New York Times just reported, far more than any other State. We pay the highest gas prices out of all 50 States, substantially more than the national average, higher even than Hawaii, which is an island State. The causes of that are well understood, and it is those very causes that are now causing these refineries to close in a way that is going to make the problem even worse by further constraining supply. The reason, of course, the cause, is the taxes, the regulations, the particular fuel blend that is required, and the continually changing environmental mandates that cause the cost of doing business to continually grow and that require these refineries to continually update their equipment in a way that makes doing business just no longer viable.”