California Governor RESPONDS as Gas Stations Shut Down Across State

California’s Energy Suicide: The Hypocrisy of Policy Over Reality

Something fundamental—and fundamentally broken—is shifting in the Golden State’s energy landscape, happening at a pace that has seemingly caught the very architects of this disaster off guard. Across California, fuel stations are shuttering their windows and locking their pumps. These are not temporary closures for renovation or brief pauses due to supply chain hiccups. These are permanent exits. The lights are going out, and they aren’t coming back on.

This wave of disappearances reveals a rotting core in how California manages—or rather, mismanagement—its critical infrastructure. The state’s leadership seems shocked, scrambling for scapegoats, but this crisis was not only predictable; it was inevitable. We are witnessing the collision of performative environmentalism with cold, hard economic reality, and the casualties are the working-class drivers paying exorbitant prices at the pump.

To understand the depth of this self-inflicted wound, we must first look at the bizarre “energy island” California has constructed for itself. Unlike the rest of the contiguous United States, California has virtually no pipeline connections to bring gasoline in from other regions. Geography plays a part, but so do federal regulations and deliberate infrastructure choices made decades ago. The state mandates a unique, “boutique” fuel blend known as CARB (California Air Resources Board) gasoline. While touted as a cleaner-burning formula to reduce emissions, this specialized blend is complex, expensive, and difficult to manufacture. Only a tiny handful of refineries on the planet can produce it.

By mandating a fuel that the rest of the country doesn’t use, and by refusing to build the infrastructure to import standard fuel, California has voluntarily severed its lifelines. When a supply disruption hits, the state cannot simply open a tap from Texas or the Midwest. It is entirely alone, dependent on its own shrinking refining capacity or the slow arrival of oceangoing tankers.

And that refining capacity is being systematically dismantled. Two decades ago, California boasted over thirty operating oil refineries. By 2010, that number had dipped to the mid-twenties. Today, we are down to roughly fifteen active facilities producing gasoline. In just the last few years, the state has shed hundreds of thousands of barrels of daily refining capacity. Major players like the Marathon refinery in Martinez and the Phillips 66 facility in Rodeo have ceased gasoline production entirely, converting to renewable diesel.

These closures are invariably framed by corporate PR teams and politicians as victories for environmental progress—a glorious transition away from fossil fuels. But there is a glaring, uncomfortable fact that gets conveniently omitted from the press releases: California’s demand for gasoline has not disappeared. The state still burns through 13 to 15 billion gallons of gasoline every single year.

This is the height of hypocrisy. The political class celebrates the closure of a local refinery as a “green” win, yet the cars on the freeway still need gas. So, where does that fuel come from now? It doesn’t magically appear from solar panels. It comes from overseas. The system has shifted to rely on imports from Asia—South Korea, Singapore, and occasionally the Middle East.

Consider the irony. California, the self-proclaimed leader in climate action, is now forcing its energy supply chain onto heavy-fuel-oil-burning tankers that must travel thousands of miles across the Pacific. Instead of refining oil domestically under strict environmental regulations, we are outsourcing the pollution and burning massive amounts of carbon just to get the fuel to our shores. This is not environmentalism; it is offshoring guilt.

This reliance on imports has made the state dangerously vulnerable. A typhoon in the Pacific, a shipping lane disruption in Asia, or a mechanical failure at a South Korean refinery now translates directly to a price spike in Los Angeles or San Francisco. We have traded energy security for the illusion of moral superiority. When refineries here experience unplanned shutdowns—which happens frequently due to aging equipment and deferred maintenance caused by a hostile regulatory environment—prices skyrocket immediately.

The economic fallout is devastating, particularly for the small business owners running gas stations. The narrative pushed by the Governor’s office is one of corporate greed and price gouging. In recent weeks, we have seen state leadership publicly berate oil companies and station operators, threatening investigations and penalties. It is a classic political misdirection: break the system, then blame the people trying to survive within it.

The reality is that most fuel retailers operate on razor-thin margins, often earning just pennies per gallon. They rely on high volume and convenience store snacks to keep the lights on. When wholesale prices spike unpredictably because of the state’s fragile supply chain, station owners face a fatal choice: raise prices to match their soaring costs or sell fuel at a loss. In rural areas and lower-income urban neighborhoods, where owners lack the capital to weather the storm, they simply close.

These closures are not an act of rebellion; they are an act of surrender to impossible mathematics. Industry associations spent the last twelve months warning Sacramento that compliance costs and volatility were making the business model untenable. Those warnings were dismissed as industry whining. Now, as stations board up, the state acts surprised.

But the most dangerous aspect of this crisis is the concept of the “point of no return.” When a refinery converts to renewable diesel or shuts down, it does not come back. The permits expire, the specialized equipment is dismantled, and the skilled workforce disperses. The same applies to gas stations. Underground tanks are pulled, land is redeveloped, and the infrastructure is lost forever. Even if a future administration realizes the folly of these policies, they cannot simply flip a switch to restore capacity. The physical infrastructure necessary to fuel the economy is being erased.

This creates a terrifying contradiction. The state is aggressively pushing for electric vehicle adoption, acting as if the internal combustion engine will vanish tomorrow. But the transition to EVs is a decades-long process. During this gap, millions of working-class residents still need gasoline to get to work, to take their kids to school, and to run their businesses. By destroying the supply side of the equation before the demand side has actually shifted, the state has engineered a structural shortage.

The result is a punishing tax on the population. In 2024, California drivers paid between $1.50 and $2.00 more per gallon than the national average. For a typical family, this extracts an additional $600 to $1,000 annually from their household budget. For small businesses, contractors, and truckers, the costs are catastrophic, driving up the price of groceries, services, and shipping for everyone else.

You cannot regulate your way out of a shortage. You cannot preach energy independence while making yourself dependent on foreign tankers. And you cannot demonize the very businesses that keep the state moving without eventually breaking the economy. California’s energy policy is a masterclass in cognitive dissonance, a cautionary tale for the rest of the world that physics and economics do not care about your political ideology. The closures are just the beginning; unless reality starts taking precedence over performative politics, the Golden State is heading for a grind to a halt.