California Pays Foreign Countries $25 Billion for Oil While Reducing Production at Home

California has a leadership and affordability problem.

Families are paying more for gasoline, electricity, groceries, housing, and just about everything else. Yet every year, California pays an estimated $25 billion to out-of-state suppliers for imported oil.

Think about that for a moment.

Twenty-five billion dollars leaves California's economy each year to pay foreign oil producers for something we can produce here at home.

California imports nearly 80 percent of the oil it uses. That oil arrives from foreign countries after traveling thousands of miles by tanker across oceans before reaching California refineries.

California uses roughly 1.8 million barrels of petroleum every day. Oil fuels our airplanes, powers agriculture, moves freight, supports emergency services, and helps manufacture more than 6,000 products used in daily life.

The question elected officials need to answer is why California would continue to pay billions of dollars elsewhere when those dollars could support jobs, businesses, and communities in California.

Every barrel we import is money leaving our economy.

Every tanker arriving at our ports represents a loss of jobs, tax revenue, and economic activity that could have stayed here.

California has become import-dependent, and it is costing all of us at the store, at the gas pump, when we fly, and in how much we pay for food, and so much more.

California producers operate under some of the most stringent environmental, labor, and safety standards anywhere in the world. Yet state policy doesn’t require oil-producing countries to follow our standards and rules.

If California is going to continue using oil, California should receive the jobs, investment, tax revenue, and economic benefits that come with producing it.