California Is Trying to Fix a Problem It Created

California lawmakers are once again debating how to help displaced oil and gas workers. A recent KQED article highlights growing calls from labor organizations to expand the state's Displaced Oil and Gas Workers Fund, arguing that more workers will need assistance as California's transition away from California-based fossil fuels towards foreign imports accelerates. The program has helped hundreds of former oil workers find new employment, and supporters now want to make it permanent and provide additional benefits such as wage replacement and longer-term financial assistance.

Helping workers who lose their jobs is a worthy objective, but there is a larger question that deserves equal attention: Why are these workers losing their jobs in the first place?

A Government-Created Problem

Unlike workers displaced by technological innovation or an unexpected economic downturn, many of California's oil workers are being displaced by deliberate public policy.

For years, California's elected leadership has pursued policies explicitly designed to reduce and ultimately eliminate in-state oil production in favor of foreign imports. New permitting restrictions, increasingly burdensome regulations, setbacks, financial assurance requirements, refinery closures, and a stated objective of ending fossil fuel production have all contributed to a steady contraction of California's petroleum industry.

The result has been predictable.

Workers lose jobs. Families lose income. Communities lose property tax revenue. Local businesses lose customers. Foreign imports increase.

Then the state creates a taxpayer-funded program to help workers transition into entirely different careers.

Solving the Wrong Problem

The KQED article describes the Displaced Oil and Gas Workers Fund as one of California's primary responses to the energy transition. Since its creation in 2022, the $30 million program has assisted hundreds of displaced workers with training, certifications, and job placement. Advocates now seek to extend the program beyond its current 2027 sunset date and expand benefits, including wage replacement during retraining.

From CIPA's perspective, this raises an obvious question.

Wouldn't it be better if experienced oil workers simply remained employed in the careers they already know, especially since California continues to consume more oil than it produces?

California's oil workers are among the most highly trained and highly paid industrial employees in the state. They operate sophisticated equipment, maintain critical infrastructure, comply with some of the world's most stringent environmental regulations, and earn wages capable of supporting their families.

These are precisely the kinds of jobs policymakers routinely say they want to protect.

Yet many of those same policymakers continue advancing legislation and regulations intended to eliminate them.

California Still Needs Oil

California's petroleum demand has not disappeared.

The state continues consuming well over one million barrels of crude oil every day. As California production declines, imported crude increasingly fills the gap.

That means California is not eliminating the need for petroleum. It is simply eliminating California jobs.

Rather than producing energy under California's rigorous environmental and labor standards, the state is increasingly relying on oil produced elsewhere, often under less stringent regulatory regimes, and transported thousands of miles to California refineries.

Meanwhile, California workers are told they should retrain for different careers.

Fix the Cause, Not Just the Consequences

California's oil workers do not need a permanent displacement program because their skills have become obsolete. They need policymakers willing to recognize that many of today's job losses are the direct result of government policy choices.

Supporting displaced workers is compassionate. Preventing unnecessary displacement in the first place is better public policy.

California's independent producers have long argued that responsible in-state oil production, strong environmental stewardship, and high-quality union and non-union jobs are not mutually exclusive. A balanced energy policy can preserve employment while continuing to reduce emissions through technological innovation and operational improvements.

The state's current approach, however, risks becoming circular: adopt policies that eliminate jobs, create government programs to help displaced workers, then expand those programs as more jobs disappear.

For California's independent producers and the thousands of men and women they employ, the better solution is not a larger worker displacement fund.

It is an energy policy that stops displacing workers in the first place.