This shouldn’t really come as a surprise, certainly not to anyone living in the state. I’ve been hammering the refinery situation for two years, and John just had a piece a couple of days ago on the situation with Sable Oil Company’s offshore platforms.
President Trump had invoked the Defense Production Act to get their newly refurbished and operating Santa Ynez platform offshore of Santa Barbara pumping again in the face of a concerted shutdown effort by the state.
…The backstory here was that President Trump, citing the war in Iran and the surge in gasoline prices, issued an executive order in March invoking the Defense Production Act and allowing a company that operates oil platforms off the coast of Santa Barbara begin pumping again.
President Donald Trump issued an executive order late Friday morning that would authorize the Secretary of the Department of Energy to greenlight Sable Offshore oil company’s ongoing efforts to restart production at the much-fought-over Santa Ynez Unit off the coast of Gaviota. Energy Secretary Christ Wright quickly followed up by doing exactly that.
CA Superior Court Judge Donna Geck, in a truly bizarre ruling, basically said that the state injunction against pumping overruled the federal emergency order, and so stop that right now.
It’s one more example in the reams of evidence over the decades of California being willing to chew its right home-grown, energy independence foot off as it virtue signals with its overdeveloped left.
Now it’s fast approaching shades of the German fossil fuel conundrum for having made deals with the Cult of Green Dreaming Devils.
In March, warning bells were already sounding about the precarious state of CA fuel stocks, rapidly disappearing refining capacity, and the delivery system, calling California, alone among contiguous United States, a self-created ‘energy island.’
The United States produces more crude oil than any country in history, pumping more than 13.5 million barrels per day. On paper, that suggests a high level of energy security.
But energy security for different states depends on infrastructure and access. For the 39 million residents of California, independence is largely geographic fiction.
If the Strait of Hormuz remains constrained, attention will focus on Asia’s large crude importers. Yet a close look at U.S. pipeline maps and refinery configurations shows that California is uniquely exposed as well.
The Gulf Coast is connected to the Permian Basin and Canada by a dense network of crude pipelines. Oil moves efficiently by pipe to refining complexes in Texas and Louisiana, and from there into national product markets.
California has no such connection. There are no crude oil pipelines linking the Permian or midcontinent to the West Coast. Every barrel refined in California must be produced locally, shipped from Alaska, or delivered by tanker.
That isolation makes California functionally an energy island.
Decling Production, Rising Imports
California once ranked among the nation’s leading oil producers. Today, output has fallen sharply from its historical peak. According to the California Energy Commission, the majority of crude processed in the state now arrives via marine imports.
The US does import hundreds of thousands of barrels of oil a day, though. The key is where it comes from and then where most of it winds up.
…The United States still imports roughly 700,000 barrels per day from Saudi Arabia and Iraq. Over half of that transits the Strait of Hormuz. In a 20 million barrel per day national market, that volume may appear small.
The key issue is distribution.
Because Gulf Coast refiners can access domestic crude through pipelines, Persian Gulf barrels are not evenly spread across the country. A disproportionate share of those Saudi and Iraqi imports ends up in PADD 5, the West Coast refining district, precisely because California lacks pipeline access to Permian supply.
When shipments through Hormuz are disrupted, the shortfall is not felt uniformly. Houston has alternatives. Midwest refiners have alternatives.
California does not.
The missing barrels show up in Long Beach and the Bay Area first, because that is where import dependence is highest and substitution options are limited.
There’s also a tremendous amount of information in the article I’ve linked to about the difficulties in refining what the state imports, depending on what the grade of the oil is vs what the refinery is tooled for. That all adds to the cost overhead if not synced up properly. With less refining capacity, the flexibility to choose the right facility for efficient oil refining is also lost. It’s a complicated, vicious, expensive circle that the geniuses clutching their unicorn farts in Sacramento have created.
But as long as oil tankers continue to arrive, there’s no problem other than paying the piper. It’s when they don’t show up at Long Beach or in San Francisco that difficulties will be felt, and almost immediately, because there is no slack in a system that runs on demand with little backup.
The result of that short-sightedness and dogged clinging to climate dogma looks as if it might now introduce Californians to a looming problem in Germany or Australia.
Statewide Fuel Shortages are Imminent
Currently, we only have two to three more weeks of fuel ships still in transit across the Pacific
November 5, 2025, I wrote an article titled “An Increasing Threat to Readiness,” expressing my concern about our declining in-state crude oil production and refining capabilities. At the end of that article, I wrote about the need for presidential intervention under the Defense Production Act based on what I saw happening at that time. I was also very concerned about where we were headed in the future based on state policies. In this article, it is my intent to give the reader a chronological list of where we were, where we are now, and what lies ahead…
Mike Ariza goes methodically through every stage from that moment to the end of January 2026. The Valero Benecia refinery had suddenly pulled the crude oil feed from it’s unit and, he reports, three days later thermal imaging showed the machinery was cold. The refinery had shut down three months before its announced April closing.
In response, imports of gasoline and other necessary fossil fuel products surged 42%, and prices were already climbing in Northern California by the first week of February.
His outlook is beyond dreary.
…April 21, 2026: As we approach May and the summer driving season, an unprecedented crisis is approaching due to state policies. My team previously stated that events such as storms at sea, unscheduled refinery downtime, or global events could severely cripple our state because we were importing over 40% of our refined fuel.
With the onset of the Iranian War, crude oil supplies to all refineries in Asia were cut off. This forced Asian countries to cut back the crude oil rates to all of their refineries. As their crude oil charge rates were cut, their production of gasoline, jet fuel, and diesel also declined. Approximately four weeks ago, their production rates dropped so low that they were forced to discontinue all shipments of fuel to California.
Currently, we only have two to three more weeks of fuel ships still in transit across the Pacific. After three weeks, once they are offloaded, we have nothing backing them up. 42% of our gasoline, jet fuel, and diesel supplies will be gone.
And his ‘What Does This Mean for Us?’ sounds like something out of a dystopian futurist novel.
But it’s the California Gavin Newsom and his cronies, aided by supine voters, have built for everyone coming to full fruition.
…Inventory Lows: Gasoline inventories in our state are currently at a 10-year low.
Price Surges: Once the fuel ships stop arriving, prices will likely surge to historic levels as the state’s fuel reserves are exhausted.
Widespread Shortages: We can expect unprecedented shortages in California, Phoenix, Reno, and Las Vegas.
Supply Chain Collapse: Due to diesel shortages, we can expect the price of all goods to increase, along with the real possibility of commodity and food supply issues.
Aviation: Jet fuel prices have already doubled. Once these shortages hit, we should expect massive flight cancellations.
Ariza does have some short term fixes he suggests, but they are bandaids, and if the pain comes, suspending carbon taxes on gasoline you can’t get is literally a worthless gesture.
One thing Californians could do is vote for, oh, I don’t know – something different at last?
He flipped the script on them instantly.
California Gubernatorial candidate Steve Hilton (R) gave a masterful response to the debate moderator who tried to use President Trump’s endorsement of him as an attack against him.
MODERATOR: “Mr. Hilton, you said you were ‘deeply… pic.twitter.com/EvpBVxxaIy
— Overton (@overton_news) April 23, 2026
…HILTON: “One of the proudest days of my life was the day I became an American citizen.”
“It happened in a ceremony right here in San Francisco.”
“So it is a deep honor for me to be endorsed by the President of the United States.”
“And he’s the think that’s going to help every Californian when I’m governor, is that we will have a constructive relationship and partnership with the federal government, which would be the case, I would hope for any party in that situation so that we can make things better in California.”
“Work WITH the president and his administration to manage our forests better, to harvest the timber so we can build the single-family homes we need for young families…”
“To work to increase California energy production as he wants to do so we can lower gas prices, to fight the fraud in our government so we can cut spending and cut taxes, to work to enforce our immigration laws.”…
As with the Sable Oil Company venture, there are still companies willing to invest in either pulling oil out of the ground underneath the stubbornly dogmatic naysayers in the state, or trying to build a lfieline to them…
California’s First Gasoline Pipeline Moving Forward
A reprieve from high gasoline prices in California is in the works — though it won’t please everyone in a state that has vilified Big Oil.
On Monday, Phillips 66 (NYSE:PSX) and Kinder Morgan (NYSE:KMI) announced they have secured enough long-term shipper commitments to advance a proposed pipeline to supply fuel to Arizona and California.
According to the companies, the Western Gateway Pipeline will connect Midwest and Gulf Coast refinery supply to Phoenix, Arizona and California markets with connectivity to Las Vegas, Nevada, via Kinder Morgan’s CALNEV pipeline.
Western Gateway will consist of a new pipeline from Borger, Texas, to Phoenix, Arizona, combined with Kinder Morgan’s existing SFPP pipeline from Colton, California, to Phoenix, Arizona, which will be reversed to enable east-to-west product flows into California.
The Western Gateway Pipeline will be fed by Midwest and Gulf Coast supplies connected to Borger, Texas. The Gold Pipeline, operated by Phillips 66, which currently flows from Borger to St. Louis, will be reversed to enable refined products from Midwest and Gulf Coast refineries to flow toward Borger and supply the pipeline.
The project is targeting an in-service date of mid-2029.
The need for Western Gateway comes down to the closure of two refineries, which together account for nearly 20% of California’s refining capacity.
…but they have to be able to get by and through the state’s regulatory blocking mechanisms in order to do so eventually.
Their efforts to save the state from itself kind of remind me of the old joke about the ardent but literal fellow of faith on a rooftop as the flood waters gradually come up around him. Where a boat paddles up and, reaching a hand out, would-be rescuers tell him, ‘Jump in!’
No, he says. The Lord will save me.
Then, with the water lapping at his chest, a helo swoops overhead. From the door, a Coastie shouts to him, ‘We’re sending down a basket! Jump in!’
He waves them off because the Lord will save him.
Shortly thereafter, the fellow washes off the rooftop and drowns in the torrent.
Meeting God in the pearly hereafter, the man is noticeably upset and asks why no one ever came for him.
‘I sent a boat AND a helicopter! What more did you want?’
California has to be willing to be saved, before they can save themselves.
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