California Cannot Protect the Coast by Importing More Oil Across It

California is again warning that federal action threatens the state’s coastline. In a July 7 announcement, the California Natural Resources Agency urged Californians to participate in NOAA’s new review of the California Coastal Management Program, arguing that the federal government is using the process to weaken California’s role in reviewing offshore drilling, pipeline maintenance and other coastal development decisions.

CIPA members should take the coastal protection argument seriously.

They should also point out the obvious contradiction.

California cannot claim to protect coastal communities and marine life while shutting down safe, highly regulated in-state oil production and replacing those barrels with crude imported by ocean-going tankers from thousands of miles away. That is not environmental leadership. It is risk-shifting with a press release.

According to the California Energy Commission’s Annual Oil Supply Sources to California Refineries, foreign crude supplied 61.1 percent of California refinery crude in 2025, while California production supplied just 22.9 percent. That is not a small policy footnote. It is the state’s petroleum reality.

Every barrel California refuses to produce here must be replaced from somewhere else unless demand falls at the same pace. It has not. California still runs on gasoline, diesel, jet fuel, asphalt, lubricants, plastics, farm inputs and the thousands of daily products that come from petroleum. The only real question is whether those barrels are produced under California rules or imported through a marine supply chain the state does not control.

That is where the Newsom administration’s argument starts to buckle.

The administration says offshore oil production threatens coastal communities and marine ecosystems. But imported crude does not arrive by carrier pigeon. It arrives by ship. Those ships move through the same coastal waters, into the same ports, past the same fisheries, beaches, marine mammals and coastal communities the state claims to be protecting.

CARB already understands this. Its own ocean-going vessel program explains that ocean-going vessels produce NOx, particulate matter, sulfur oxides and greenhouse gas emissions, and that in-transit, maneuvering and anchoring emissions make up the overwhelming share of those vessel emissions around California ports and marine terminals. Tankers are not environmental pixie dust. They are large mobile industrial sources.

The California Air Resources Board’s At-Berth Regulation was adopted for the very reason CIPA has been verbalizing for years: ships pollute. CARB expanded the rule to cover more vessel categories, including tanker vessels, because ocean-going vessels run engines and boilers while docked and contribute to emissions in port communities.

So when California policy blocks in-state production and increases reliance on imported crude, the state is not eliminating oil risk. It is moving that risk offshore, onto ships, into port communities, and into global supply chains.

That is not cleaner. It is just farther away.

The tanker risk is not theoretical. NOAA’s Office of Response and Restoration notes that oil spills remain common enough that it responds to more than 150 oil and chemical spills in U.S. waters each year, and the International Tanker Owners Pollution Federation maintains oil tanker spill statistics because tanker spills have been a recurring global problem for decades. The fact that modern safety practices have reduced spill frequency is good news. It does not make tanker dependence a coastal protection strategy.

California officials often point to the 2015 Refugio spill as proof that oil infrastructure carries risk. It does. NOAA’s Refugio Beach Oil Spill record states that more than 100,000 gallons of crude oil spilled after a pipeline ruptured near Refugio State Beach, with oil entering the ocean.

But that history cuts both ways.

If the lesson of Refugio is that oil transportation must be taken seriously, then the state cannot ignore the transportation risk created by importing most of its crude supply by marine tanker. Pipelines, platforms, terminals and ships all require scrutiny. Pretending only California production creates risk while imported crude arrives risk-free is not analysis. It is politics wearing a lab coat.

The federal review itself is real. NOAA’s Federal Register notice states that the agency will hold an in-person public meeting in Santa Monica on August 10, virtual meetings on August 11 and 12, and accept written comments through August 22. NOAA is specifically seeking input on offshore oil production, pipeline maintenance, desalination projects, undersea cables and other coastal development issues.

That means CIPA members and allies have a direct opportunity to put the import question into the record.

The message should be simple: California’s coastal policy must account for the full barrel. Not just the barrel produced in Kern County. Not just the barrel from an offshore platform. The full barrel includes the foreign field, the tanker voyage, port emissions, marine spill risk, refinery supply reliability and the cost to California families when state policy replaces nearby production with distant imports.

The Biden and Newsom climate playbook often treats “not produced here” as “not emitted anywhere.” That was never true.

The Trump administration’s offshore leasing proposal also needs context. BOEM’s California Oil and Gas Leasing Activities page describes potential federal lease sales offshore Southern and Central California, with first sales tentatively scheduled for 2027. Governor Newsom and the governors of Oregon and Washington have formally opposed new offshore drilling, as the Governor’s Office announced in its West Coast governors statement.

CIPA does not need to make this argument more complicated than it is.

If California leaders oppose new offshore leasing because of coastal risk, they should stop making onshore production impossible. If they oppose pipeline restarts because of spill risk, they should stop pretending tanker imports are harmless. If they are serious about coastal communities, they should reduce dependence on foreign crude shipped across the Pacific, through the Panama Canal, from the Middle East, from South America and from wherever the global market can find the next cargo.

California’s remaining in-state producers operate under some of the most rigorous environmental, labor, air, water, wildlife and spill-prevention rules in the world. They are inspected by California agencies. They employ Californians. They pay California taxes. They support local governments, schools, public safety and working families.

Foreign tankers do not.

That is the hypocrisy at the center of this debate. California cannot kneecap its own producers, rely on imported crude, and then claim moral superiority because the spill risk, emissions and production impacts happen somewhere else or just offshore on a moving vessel.

The coast deserves better than slogans.

It deserves a petroleum policy that reduces real risk, not one that exports responsibility and imports the barrel anyway.