We’ve Hit ‘Peak Gasoline’ Demand

Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm said on CNBC's “Squawk Box” on Friday that companies are closing refineries, saying, “There are significant policy incentives for producing drop-in biofuels, and some I see it happening.” And it means that “the peak of gasoline demand has been achieved.''

asked co-host Becky Quick. “Secretary, we've been talking a lot about what's going on with ExxonMobil and Chevron, basically apart from the refinery situation and their operations in California. They've made billions of dollars in the last few days. Mike Wirth talked about this last night and said that the California situation is largely due to California policy. I know this is not federal policy. But if you look at California and its gas prices, it's creating dissatisfaction for consumers. They're basically buying these things, whether it's refineries or pipelines, because they don't think they're going to get a return on their investment. When they say things like that and multiple large companies are basically pulling out of some of these things, what is that? What do you mean? What can we do at the federal level?”

Granholm replied: [are] Many companies that own refineries are converting some of their refineries to biofuels anyway.There [are] There are big policy incentives for creating drop-in biofuels, and we can see some of that happening. Refineries across the country are operating at full capacity. So we — but Becky, let me just say this, we think we've reached peak gasoline in the United States because of the increase in electric vehicle sales. And obviously, this is just in the United States, other developing countries are still expected to see significant demand growth, potentially significant demand growth, but that demand is It is decreasing. However, the US is seeing flattening and declining gasoline demand, and electric vehicle sales numbers were just released yesterday. … [I]In 2023, 1.4 million EVs will be sold. This is a 50% increase over the previous year. It will have an impact. ”