For security, a West Coast oil reserve

Energy security is an essential component of California’s economic stability. International conflicts, whether expressed through terrorism, insurgency or organized crime, threaten the supply of oil necessary for fueling our regional economy. The federal government should take action to mitigate the impact of disruptions to California’s oil imports. It should expand the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to create a West Coast stockpile.

In recent years, California has become precariously reliant on foreign oil imports. For example, in the five years following the U.S. invasion of Iraq, Southern Californian refineries have more than doubled their utilization of Iraqi crude. Data compiled by the Energy Information Administration reveals that Iraqi oil accounted for 19 percent of Southern Californian refinery runs during the first six months of 2008 and 27 percent in April. Iraq is the leading source of foreign crude for these refineries.


Growing dependence on Iraqi oil is more than simply a problem for Los Angeles. Southern California’s refineries supply fuel to 25 million Americans throughout California, Nevada and Arizona. They also fuel the intermodal supply chain. Northern California’s Richmond refinery uses Iraqi crude, as well.

We should expand strategic petroleum reserves to insulate us from inevitable attacks on Iraq’s oil infrastructure. We now depend on a steady flow of oil from Iraq’s port city of Basra, but we can’t count on it. Iraq and Iran are wrestling for control of Basra’s oil wealth, with the latter using Shiite militias as proxies. Further upstream, various ethnic insurgent groups are fighting for Iraq’s other oil assets. These non-state actors are skilled at sabotaging oil infrastructure and are willing to do so at any cost.

We are increasingly dependent on unreliable exporters like Iraq because we can no longer satisfy most of our regional oil consumption from domestic fields. From 1986 to 2006, California’s annual crude production declined by nearly 40 percent and Alaska’s production fell by 60 percent. In 2006, foreign imports supplied a majority of Southern Californian refinery runs for the first time in state history.

Sacramento Bee