Legislators Receive Crisis Briefing at CIPA’s Oil Symposium
- Dec 22, 2025
- 3 min read
Last week, the California Independent Petroleum Association (CIPA) convened what may well go down as its most consequential Oil Symposium to date. Held at Pelican Hill in Newport Beach, CIPA’s 15th Annual Oil Symposium brought together a bipartisan group of over 20 state lawmakers for a candid, educational briefing on the rapidly deteriorating state of California’s oil production, pipelines, and refining systems, and the narrowing window to stabilize them before permanent damage is done.
The two-day symposium was designed expressly as an educational policy briefing. The goal was straightforward: put facts, data, and real-world consequences squarely on the table, away from the noise and slogans that too often dominate Sacramento’s energy debates.
CIPA Chief Executive Officer Rock Zierman opened the symposium with a sobering assessment of California’s energy trajectory. Drawing from CIPA’s policy briefing materials, Zierman outlined how California has drifted into a self-created energy crisis, one defined by refinery closures, collapsing pipeline economics, and regulatory barriers that are steadily making in-state oil production uneconomic, even as demand remains stubbornly stable.
Zierman noted that California once operated more than 40 refineries; today, only nine remain, with additional closures imminent. As refineries shut down, pipelines lose throughput and become uneconomic, triggering a cascading failure across the energy supply chain. The idling of the last remaining pipeline carrying Kern County crude to Northern California refineries was highlighted as a flashing red warning light: once pipelines go dark, they do not come back. Without pipelines, crude moves by truck, train, or tanker, which are costlier, dirtier, and far less reliable options.
Despite political narratives suggesting otherwise, Californians still consume roughly 1.8 million barrels of petroleum per day and rely on more than 6,000 petroleum-based products essential to daily life, from transportation and agriculture to healthcare and electricity reliability. Zierman emphasized that shrinking in-state production and refining does not eliminate demand; it simply outsources it, often to foreign regimes with weaker environmental standards and higher lifecycle emissions.
Following the CIPA briefing, Professor Michael Mische of the University of Southern California delivered a comprehensive, data-driven presentation on California’s gasoline supply outlook, refining capacity, and price stability. His analysis reinforced and expanded upon the warnings raised earlier in the session.
Professor Mische explained that California’s gasoline demand has declined far more slowly than state agencies projected, falling only about 13 percent over more than two decades, and actually increasing again in the post-pandemic period. Meanwhile, in-state oil production has fallen roughly 75 percent since the early 1980s, while foreign oil imports have surged by more than 800 percent. Today, California imports roughly two-thirds of its oil, much of it from geopolitically unstable regions.
Mische also addressed the widening mismatch between optimistic electric-vehicle adoption forecasts and on-the-ground realities. EV adoption is slowing, vehicle costs remain high, electricity prices in California are among the highest in the nation, and more than 96 percent of vehicles on the road today still rely on gasoline or diesel. In this context, policies that assume a rapid collapse in fuel demand, while simultaneously allowing refineries and pipelines to disappear, create an obvious supply and affordability crisis.
His conclusion was blunt: fewer refineries mean less gasoline, greater reliance on imports, more maritime tanker traffic, higher emissions, and higher prices at the pump. Once refining capacity is lost, California becomes acutely vulnerable to supply shocks, geopolitical disruptions, and price spikes that disproportionately harm working families and small businesses.
Throughout both days, lawmakers from across the political spectrum engaged deeply with the material, asking pointed questions and offering candid observations about the urgency of the situation. The discussion repeatedly returned to a shared concern: if California fails to act soon to stabilize production, pipelines, and refineries, the consequences will be irreversible and catastrophic from both an affordability and fuel-availability standpoint.
CIPA’s 15th Annual Oil Symposium underscored a reality that can no longer be ignored. California is running an energy system that depends on infrastructure it is simultaneously dismantling. Education, honest data, and pragmatic policy choices are no longer optional, they are essential. The conversations at Pelican Hill made clear that time is short, and the cost of inaction will be borne by California families first.