Foreign Conflict Again Exposes California’s Self-Inflicted Fuel Vulnerability

California motorists are once again paying the price for an energy policy built around dependence on foreign oil and overseas shipping.

The Sacramento Bee reports that renewed hostilities between the United States and Iran, along with uncertainty surrounding the Strait of Hormuz, have pushed global oil prices sharply higher and raised the possibility that California gasoline could approach or exceed $7 per gallon during the peak summer travel season. Brent crude climbed to approximately $84.50 per barrel, an increase of roughly 12 percent in only three days. Gasoline averaged $5.35 per gallon in Sacramento and $5.39 statewide as of July 15.

The latest spike should surprise no one. California has deliberately reduced its own oil production while becoming increasingly reliant on crude imported from politically unstable nations thousands of miles away. When conflict erupts, tanker routes are disrupted or foreign refiners reduce production, California consumers are among the first to feel the consequences and the last to see relief.

According to the California Energy Commission, only 22.9 percent of the crude oil supplied to California refineries in 2025 was produced in California. More than 61 percent came from foreign countries, including Iraq, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Brazil, Guyana and Ecuador. Iraq alone supplied more than 50 million barrels of crude oil to California during 2025.

California’s fuel market is especially vulnerable because it is effectively an energy island. There are no pipelines delivering gasoline into the state from the nation’s major refining centers. Replacement crude oil and finished gasoline must frequently arrive by marine vessel, and the Energy Commission acknowledges that overseas resupply can take approximately three weeks. That delay allows international supply disruptions and refinery outages to produce longer and more severe price spikes for California consumers.

The answer cannot be to deepen the same dependence that created the problem. California should permit and encourage the production of more oil from California fields, under California’s environmental, labor, and safety standards. Increasing local production would provide refiners with a more dependable supply of crude oil, reduce exposure to foreign conflicts and tanker disruptions, improve market stability, and place downward pressure on fuel costs.

More local crude oil cannot, by itself, replace the refining capacity California has already driven out of the state. The loss of major refineries has further tightened supply and increased volatility. California has lost approximately 30 percent of its refining capacity in five years, leaving the market increasingly dependent on imported gasoline that must meet the state’s specialized fuel specifications.

That makes protecting both local production and the remaining refining infrastructure essential. A stable gasoline market requires crude oil, functioning refineries, adequate inventories, and reliable transportation infrastructure. California policy has weakened nearly every link in that chain and then blamed oil companies when predictable shortages produce higher prices.

California still consumes enormous quantities of petroleum every day. Refusing to produce that oil locally does not eliminate demand. It merely transfers production, jobs, tax revenue, and environmental risk to foreign countries while forcing Californians to pay the transportation and geopolitical premium at the pump.

Drilling more California oil would not insulate the state from every movement in the global market, but it would provide a reliable local supply that is not dependent on a foreign government, a distant refinery or a tanker successfully navigating a war zone. California lawmakers have a choice: continue importing instability or begin producing more of the energy Californians still need here at home.