Industry groups stir opposition to a cap-and-trade expansion they say will lead to higher gas prices

In a conference call with oil industry analysts in late 2012, Mike Wirth, a Chevron Corp. executive, took stock of California’s greenhouse gas reduction policies and warned that the state’s plan to expand its controversial cap-and-trade program to vehicle fuels in 2015 would result in higher prices at the pump. “If you get fuels under the cap and trade, which is anticipated out towards the middle of this decade, the costs explode and that is where you go from cost in the hundreds of millions of dollars a year to costs in the billions of dollars a year,” Wirth said, according to a Thomson Reuters transcript of the call. Chevron would not absorb the expense, Wirth...