There is an environmental price paid for transporting foreign oil. An oil tanker takes an average of 40-60 days to travel from the Persian Gulf to California. Grist found that an anchored oil tanker emits 11 tons of carbon dioxide daily — the equivalent of driving nearly 800 passenger vehicles. Multiply those numbers by the 588 oil tankers making their way to our California coast and the travel time, and you end up with significant daily repercussions on our environment. 

It is hypocritical for our state leaders to pride themselves on environmental leadership and human rights activism when 50 percent of the oil extracted from the endangered and heavily de-forested Amazon rainforest comes to California.  

Furthermore, the state is spending billions of dollars a year to buy oil from nations that are anti-LGBTQ+ and don’t share most Californians’ views on human rights. California oil producers must follow the state’s greenhouse gas reduction program, account for all emissions, and operate under the world’s strictest environmental, health, and labor laws.

California-produced oil is the only climate-compliant product in the world. The same can’t be said for oil produced in the Middle East, Russia, and Ecuador, and the oil they import is entirely exempt from California’s environmental regulations. Why are we more strict on regulating our domestic production when a majority of our oil comes from environmentally irresponsible sources? It doesn’t add up. If anything, it only adds up to higher gas prices.