AB 1448: California’s Latest Attempt to Solve Oil Demand by Pretending It Doesn’t Exist

The California Legislature concluded its 2026 session by sending Governor Gavin Newsom yet another bill designed to restrict petroleum production without doing anything to reduce Californians’ actual need for petroleum.

Assembly Bill 1448, authored by Assemblymember Gregg Hart of Santa Barbara, received final legislative approval last week and now awaits action by the governor. According to KCLU’s coverage of the legislation, AB 1448 is intended to prevent existing California infrastructure from being used to support new oil and gas development in federal waters off the California coast.

Hart described the legislation as another tool California can use to oppose the Trump administration's effort to expand offshore energy development. The bill goes beyond previous restrictions by seeking to prevent existing infrastructure from supporting new federal production.

That may make for an appealing political message in Sacramento. As energy policy, however, the logic is difficult to defend.

California is not eliminating its need for crude oil by preventing oil from being produced off its own coast. Nor does preventing the use of existing infrastructure cause California's enormous petroleum demand to disappear.

It simply changes where the oil comes from.

CIPA opposed AB 1448 throughout the legislative process for precisely this reason. As CIPA explained in its opposition letter, California already imports more than 75 percent of its crude oil, including substantial quantities produced in foreign countries operating under environmental, labor, and human-rights standards far below those imposed on California producers.

Yet AB 1448 effectively says California should produce even less.

That is the fundamental absurdity of the policy.

California consumes enormous quantities of petroleum every day. Refineries must obtain crude oil somewhere to manufacture gasoline, diesel, jet fuel, and the countless other petroleum products Californians continue to use. If policymakers prohibit additional California production while demand remains, refiners do not stop needing crude oil. They purchase it somewhere else.

Increasingly, "somewhere else" means thousands of miles away.

As CIPA has warned lawmakers, imported crude must be transported to California aboard ocean-going tankers, adding transportation emissions and introducing environmental risks that do not exist to the same degree when crude is produced closer to California refineries.

The environmental contradiction should be obvious.

Sacramento policymakers routinely impose extraordinary environmental requirements on California oil producers, then cite environmental concerns as justification for replacing those producers with crude oil produced beyond California's regulatory reach.

California oil and gas operations are already subject to extensive oversight from agencies including the State Lands Commission, California Coastal Commission, and numerous other state, local, and federal regulators. Operators must comply with stringent environmental standards, permitting requirements, monitoring obligations, and enforcement regimes.

AB 1448 does not demonstrate that these regulations are inadequate. Instead, it advances the increasingly familiar Sacramento proposition that the safest amount of California petroleum production is no petroleum production at all.

There is one considerable problem with that theory: California still uses oil.

The KCLU report makes the political motivation behind AB 1448 particularly clear. Hart said the legislation is principally aimed at preventing the Trump administration from opening California's coastline to new federal oil and gas leasing. The measure would use California's jurisdiction over coastal infrastructure as leverage against production occurring in federal waters beyond the state's three-mile jurisdiction.

In other words, California is attempting to use its control over infrastructure to frustrate federal energy policy.

That may score points in the continuing political battle between Sacramento and Washington, but California consumers ultimately live with the consequences of state energy policy.

CIPA also warned that constraining domestic production would place additional upward pressure on energy costs. California already suffers from some of the nation's highest gasoline prices. Reducing potential domestic supplies, increasing reliance upon imported crude and creating additional regulatory uncertainty are hardly a recipe for making energy more affordable.

The Legislature nevertheless passed AB 1448.

Perhaps the most frustrating aspect of the legislation is that California has an opportunity to pursue a far more rational environmental policy.

Produce as much of the petroleum California continues to consume as reasonably possible here in California, where producers operate under California environmental standards, employ California workers, pay California taxes, and remain accountable to California regulators.

Then, as petroleum demand actually declines, production can decline with it.

Instead, California has repeatedly pursued the opposite sequence: suppress production first and hope demand eventually follows.

It hasn't.

The predictable result has been greater dependence on crude oil produced elsewhere.

AB 1448 continues that backwards policy. California lawmakers can congratulate themselves for preventing another barrel of oil from being produced near California while tankers continue carrying replacement barrels across the Pacific Ocean.

The atmosphere, of course, does not recognize California's political boundaries.

Neither does the global oil market.

California cannot credibly claim environmental leadership by simply exporting petroleum production, jobs, and emissions to other countries while continuing to consume the finished products here.

That isn't an energy transition.

It is outsourcing.