Kyle Rizdahl

You can definitely hear steam.

What steam does, we inject it to help separate the molecules out more cleanly.

Here, crude oil from West Texas is heated to 600 degrees and sent into a tower that looks like a rocket ship.

This tower is about 20 stories high.

Inside that tower, as crude oil is heated, fuels rise to different heights.

Lower down, there's diesel.

Towards the top is gasoline.

Okay, so that tube that looks like a water slide coming off the tower, jet fuel or what will become... Something close to jet fuel at this point.

It still needs to be further refined.

That jet fuel will help planes take off in cities like Atlanta and Philadelphia.

And the gasoline made here will be used to fuel cars like Debnell Chowdhury's blue Tacoma.

Chowdhury, an analyst at S&P Global Energy, is filling up at a gas station about 25 miles west of the Pasadena refinery.

The average retail price in Texas right now is $4 a gallon for regular.

In California, it's $6.15, quite a bit higher.

He explains why fuel costs and refining looks different here in Texas compared to California.

For one, California uses its own special gasoline.

They have to blend in more expensive components and use specialized refineries.

And California has much higher taxes on gas.

And another reason fuel costs more?

Now with the shutdown of two of the major refineries in California, they're more dependent on imports.