It worked for Venezuela, it’s gonna work for California.

California has some of the highest gas prices in the country because it has a ton of taxes and because it demands special gasoline blends that come through one single refinery and are far more expensive.

This is not because oil companies are greedy (or at least a whole lot less greedy than your average politician which isn’t saying much because California pols make piranhas seem discreet, that’s why hundreds of them have been convicted of corruption in recent years) but because the Dems actively want to make gas too expensive. And yet they insist on pretending that they’re not the reason gas prices are high.

Gov. Gavin Newsom, who does shock at the consequences of his own policies better than any politician in the land, signed a bunch of bills raising energy prices while blasting oil companies for being greedy.

Up next. State ownership of oil refineries.

The California Energy Commission, meantime, has offered a list of 12 options for policymakers to help manage the industry decline while keeping gasoline prices stable and supply levels high.

Beyond a minimum inventory mandate for gasoline storage, the possibilities include a limit on retail gasoline profit margins; a state lease or ownership of storage tanks and the gasoline that would fill them; a state lease or ownership of oceangoing tankers that hold emergency supplies of gasoline; and even a state takeover of one or more gasoline refineries.

With the actual goal being the destruction of the oil and gas industry in the state and the thieving of as much money as possible.

“The State of California would purchase and own refineries in the State to manage the supply and price of gasoline,” reads a report issued in draft version in May by the Energy Commission.

The industry, unsurprisingly, is not pleased. The main complaint: State managers can’t grasp the complexities of the gasoline production and supply system, and what’s seen as outside interference could increase prices if the system is made less efficient. Plus, they complain, over the decades, state taxes and mandates have been a prime cause of high gasoline prices in California.

“We are walking and walking and inching toward the Energy Commission … managing these refineries,” Eloy Garcia, a lobbyist for the Western States Petroleum Assn., told legislators. “We heard [at the hearing] that they are going to help us engineer the refinery. We heard they are going to tell us when to do maintenance. They’re going to tell us how much more supply, how to configure our tanks.”

This is coming from a state government that has conclusively proven that it cannot manage or run anything.

Countless billions in homeless spending simply vanished (while Gov. Newsom vetoed a bill to track and account for homeless spending.) The light rail to nowhere is headed for $100 billion in projected costs and will never be built. Businesses are fleeing California as fast as they can manage and going literally anywhere else.

If California legislators tried to tie their own shoes, it would cost $10 billion and the shoes would remain untied despite eight different commissions being tasked with figuring out how to do it.

California destroyed its own marijuana industry. The Dem regime can’t even manage to succesfully sell drugs. Something illiterate 12-year-olds in the ghetto can manage to do.

And these people want to run refineries.

Venezuela, whose brutal socialist regime many California Dems admire, tried it. How’s it working out?

Venezuela has just one gasoline refinery operating as it struggles to repair two key plants, creating a shortage so severe drivers and truckers are queuing up for hours — even days — for fuel.

A gasoline-making unit at the Puerto La Cruz refinery, accounting for just 14% of Venezuela’s gas refining capacity, is the only one left functioning in the nation after pump and compressor problems took down the Cardon and Amuay refineries last week, and attempted repairs failed, according to people familiar with the matter who asked not to be named as the information is not public.

Even though it contains the world’s largest oil reserves and one of South America’s biggest refining facilities, Venezuela has been struggling for years to meet domestic demand of 120,000 barrels a day, a situation that worsened with US sanctions. Gasoline shortages are common, with the country routinely experiencing capacity drops. Currently, capacity is down 86%.

On Wednesday both affected refineries were processing crude, but were not producing fuel. Gasoline has only been widely available in Caracas, where the government ensures timely supplies out of fear of protests. When the country faced shortages this severe in 2020, it deployed soldiers to protect gasoline stations.

Venezuela can only really resell crude oil once the socialist regime took over its refineries. It can hardly refine enough for domestic use.

So of course California will follow suit because the ultimate goal is not to add capacity or lower gas prices, but to raise prices and make gas unavailable.