Three big oil and gas-related stories this week were all interrelated with one another, though few really understand that to be the case. Those stories were: For Governor Newsom, banning hydraulic fracturing – or “fracking” as it has come to be called – in his state is a relatively simple matter in what has become, for all intents and purposes, a one-party state. All he has to do is convince his overwhelming majorities in both houses of California’s state assembly to pass a bill mandating that all fracking operations cease within the state’s borders by a date certain. Such a move would of course eliminate thousands of oil and gas-related jobs in the state, but most of those are concentrated in Republican Kern County and the surrounding parts of the Central Valley, over which the assembly’s Democrats would have little concern. Besides, they can all just respond to Republican […]