Washington Poised to Act on CIPA Plan

For more than a year, CIPA has been making the case in Washington that California’s fossil energy policies are not merely misguided, not merely expensive, and not merely hostile to the state’s oil producers, but they threaten national security.

Through repeated missions to Washington, Zoom meetings with White House staff, congressional offices, and federal departments, and direct engagement with policymakers who can actually do something about it, CIPA has argued that California’s deliberate reduction of in-state oil production and refining capacity is creating a real-world threat to affordability, fuel reliability, grid resilience, and national security. Buzz from several quarters testifies to the fact that the Trump administration is seriously contemplating taking further action in California to rectify the threat state policies pose for the transportation fuels market in the western United States.

This past week, Energy Secretary Chris Wright came to Los Angeles with a blunt message for California leaders: produce more energy at home. He said it at exactly the right moment. California drivers are again staring at punishing fuel prices, with statewide average gasoline at $5.916 per gallon and diesel at $7.727, while reports tied the latest run-up in prices to global turmoil involving Iran layered on top of California’s already fragile fuel system. It is not a mystery why California’s energy system is so fragile.  Decades of anti-oil policies are coming home to roost. 

Wright’s visit also came as federal officials moved to revive more production near Santa Barbara. The Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement said on April 2 that it had cleared Platform Heritage, part of Sable Offshore’s Santa Ynez Unit, to resume operations. Earlier reporting noted that the Trump administration directed Sable to restore the Santa Ynez unit and pipeline system as part of a broader effort to address supply disruption risks and reduce dependence on foreign oil. In plain English, Washington is looking at California and seeing a state rich in energy that keeps acting like energy is somebody else’s job.

Meanwhile, California’s refining backbone is getting smaller by the month. Phillips 66 has ceased refining for gasoline at its Los Angeles-area refinery, a 139,000 barrel-per-day facility, and Valero’s 145,000 barrel-per-day Benicia refinery is now slated to idle by the end of this month, with the fallback plan being a greater reliance on foreign imports. That is not a serious strategy, particularly in the midst of global supply interruptions. The issue is bigger than one refinery, one offshore project, or one federal visit. It goes to whether California intends to remain a serious place that understands that affordability, reliability, and domestic production still matter, or whether it intends to keep sleepwalking into a future of higher prices, fewer jobs, weaker infrastructure, and greater import dependence.

Let us be clear: none of this is new. California’s leaders were warned.

On July 22, 2024, at CIPA’s request, Congressman David Valadao and several California members of Congress wrote Governor Gavin Newsom expressing grave concerns that his energy policies could leave California’s military installations and other first lines of defense entirely dependent on foreign fuels by mid-century. They warned that California’s crude oil refining capacity was lower than ever, that only nine refineries remained to supply transportation fuels, that California military bases needed those fuels to function properly, and that shutting down the state’s oil industry and forcing refineries to rely entirely on imported crude was both fiscally and environmentally irresponsible. They noted that Californians still consumed 1.8 million barrels of crude oil per day and asked obvious questions Sacramento never seems able to answer honestly: how would the state protect critical supply chains for military installations, what would happen to nearly 55,000 oil and gas industry jobs, how would the state justify leakage, and what exactly was it doing to protect middle- and lower-income families from price spikes as it made California more dependent on more expensive foreign oil?

That letter was not hyperbolic. It was prophetic.

Tom McClintock later made the same point even more directly. In his October 30, 2025, letters to Secretary Wright, Attorney General Pam Bondi, and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, McClintock urged federal review of Rock Zierman’s white paper outlining how California’s deliberate assault on domestic refining capacity threatened not just consumers, but national security. Zierman warned that, with multiple refineries preparing to shut down, California’s 40 military installations could soon face fuel shortages while the state became increasingly dependent on foreign crude, including Russian sources. He specifically urged the use of existing federal law, particularly the Defense Production Act, to preserve essential refining operations and energy infrastructure in California.

The joint congressional letter to Secretary Hegseth and Interior Secretary Doug Burgum drives the point home with a boot heel. It states that California once had more than 40 refineries and now has only seven that produce gasoline, diesel, and jet fuel, with more refineries considering shutting down. It notes that California is home to eight Army bases, seven Air Force bases, seven Marine Corps bases, fifteen Navy bases, and two Coast Guard bases, all of which require adequate energy supplies to function and provide national defense.

It adds another point that ought to make even Sacramento pause: one boutique refinery in Bakersfield that relies on local crude feedstock supplies 80 percent of California’s transformer oil supply. Without transformer oil, the electric grid does not work. So, this is no longer just about gasoline prices and commute times; this is about whether California intends to undermine transportation fuels, military readiness, and elements of electric reliability all at once, then act surprised when people begin using phrases like “national security threat.” The letter asks the departments to review implications for the 41 military bases in California, along with related installations in Arizona and Nevada, and to draft options the president can use under the Defense Production Act if those risks are confirmed.

This is precisely why CIPA’s white paper has mattered, and why it has resonated. CIPA has not been asking Washington for vague moral support or campaign-year chest thumping about American energy. It has been laying out a California-specific action plan. Keep California refineries open as critical infrastructure. Reopen the San Pablo Bay pipeline so Kern crude can move north efficiently. Accelerate federal-land permitting. Support production in areas boxed in by SB 1137 setbacks. Take a more direct role in approving advanced recovery methods. Reclaim timely control over Underground Injection Control decisions and aquifer exemptions that California has allowed to languish in paperwork. Address permitting paralysis outside Kern County. Confront local phaseout efforts in places like Los Angeles and Santa Barbara where land-use power is being abused to strangle lawful existing production. That is what real federal help looks like in California.

That is also why USC Professor Michael Mische’s executive order proposals matter. The California Globe reported today that Mische drafted seven Executive Orders for President Trump’s consideration that mirror CIPA’s white paper. Mische is not floating abstractions in a seminar room; he is offering a menu of actions the president could take to ensure that the United States retains the necessary fuels from California to support economic stability and national security.

This week, CIPA CEO Rock Zierman is heading to Washington to meet with the White House as well as members of the Domestic Energy Producers Alliance to press the case that the president should act now to help California producers.

California is a fuel island with no major pipeline connection to the broader domestic crude supply system, a shrinking refining base, growing import dependence, and a political establishment that keeps congratulating itself for making all of those things worse. That is why CIPA has spent more than a year hammering the case that California requires tailored federal intervention. Washington appears to be getting ready to act. If federal officials believe domestic production matters, if they believe military preparedness matters, if they believe the Pacific theater should not be fueled on wishful thinking and imported barrels, then action is needed to fix California’s broken liquid fuels market.