Sacramento’s ‘transition’ away from oil looks more and more delusional
The rainbows-and-bunnies electric future California keeps promising is falling apart.
J. Garvin Walsh | March 26, 2026
In 1991, California had more than forty oil refineries. By the end of 2026, it will have fewer than eleven. Of those, only five are large enough to matter.
Phillips 66 shuttered its 147,000-barrel-per-day Los Angeles refinery in December. Valero’s Benicia facility will close in April. Now Chevron has warned of possible closures at its Richmond and El Segundo facilities, citing CARB’s Cap-and-Invest amendments as a potential deathblow to California refining.
In a letter to Governor Gavin Newsom, Chevron’s president, Andy Walz, put it plainly: The proposed regulation “will cripple the survivability of the state’s remaining refineries, which will result in California losing the entire industry.”
Sacramento’s response has been consistent: This is a transition. E.V. adoption is rising, petroleum demand will follow it down, and refineries closing now are simply getting ahead of an inevitable market outcome. In this telling, the gap will close on its own.
Before accepting that assurance, it is worth examining its assumptions, because each of the three fails.
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2026/03/sacramento_s_transition_away_from_oil_looks_more_and_more_delusional.html
