This is taking on overtones of The Road Warrior.
There are villains, of course, but they aren’t a byproduct of the disaster. They’re the evil doers still in place who caused it and are doing everything in their power to prevent the people of the state from receiving the much-needed relief that would end the crisis.
That ‘crisis’ would be California’s current precarious status when it comes to fossil fuels and the availability of the go-juice that runs nearly every aspect of life, from jet fuels to gasoline.
I’ve kept a pretty comprehensive running commentary going about Governor Gavin Newsom and his toadies in the state government over the years I’ve been here. Their successful efforts to cripple the oil industry in California are legendary examples of hubris and malfeasance. They’ve managed to shutter the bulk of the state’s abundant oil production, the refineries that turned that homegrown bounty into the fuels that grew a once-golden economy, and driven off oil companies to other states whose very foundational roots ran deep in California’s soil.
None of it mattered to the climate cultists elected to office. They schemed to force the populace into electric vehicles and home appliances powered by the expensive, unreliable renewables they’d traded nuclear reactors and gas-fired power plants for. But the much vaunted renewables failed to deliver as needed when needed, and costs rose astronomically, contrary to promises of ‘affordability.’ Even so, the believers continue to double down on the pain they inflict on their constituents.
There would be no quarter for the oil industry in California and, by extension, no succor for the suffering residents of the state.
The hostility is that entrenched – that reflexively dogmatic.
When a president was elected whose ‘drill, baby, drill‘ mantra (the audible, universal Kryptonite for True Believers) used the power of the federal government to try to circumvent the suicidal impulses of the state’s climate cult lobby and government collaborators by allowing oil to be pumped in federal waters just offshore, the hysteria went into overdrive.
This was the response from the governor and the state’s attorney general, even as dire shortages from the Strait of Hormuz blockades loomed over an already frightening and uncertain future for California fuel supplies and consumer prices.
While Donald Trump’s reckless and costly war with Iran forces families to pay more for gas and groceries, his Big Oil donors are profiting from his attempt to illegally restart the Sable pipeline.
California is demanding the court block this flagrant abuse of power. https://t.co/oJy23qTV1C
— Governor Gavin Newsom (@CAgovernor) May 4, 2026
It’s simply not ‘Donald Trump’s War’ or his big oil donors that are forcing Californians to pay more.
They have always paid more because of the arrogance and intransigence of California’s elected elites.
But at least they had something to buy, whatever their governor and his cult minions forced them to pay for it.
Meanwhilw this lunatic is telling us oil companies are the bad guys. https://t.co/LR61kiDFH5
— BCHABC/BCHSV-are-scams (@fairness2all) May 4, 2026
Now, thanks to those same virtue-signaling eco-poseurs, push may be coming to shove.
For an oil-rich state that, thanks solely to the policies of Gavin Newsom and Co., MUST import 75% of its oil and is down to its last refineries…
A war on refineries will do that. https://t.co/xb8ALlnQaL
— Local Knowledge Problem (@MaxUtilitarian) May 4, 2026
…now is not the best time to lose the source of 30% of that imported oil.
But that’s exactly what’s shaping up to happen.
California’s last major oil shipment is here. After this, we’re short about 200,000 barrels a day—and no one has explained the plan to replace it. @CAProblemSolver asked two weeks ago.
Still nothing.
You can’t run the fifth-largest economy on “we’ll figure it out.”…
— Senator Suzette Valladares (@SenValladares) May 4, 2026
That’s one helluva question for Gavin Newsom, Rob Bonta, and the rest of the blustering Green fools bleating about the Sable pipeline.
Where’s the oil to make up the difference to come from? It’s so weird and so dire that the Los Angeles Times has suddenly taken an interest in ‘Whudda we do now, George?’
The last California-bound oil tanker to pass through the Strait of Hormuz since war erupted is at the Port of Long Beach offloading its valuable cargo — 2 million barrels of crude destined to be transformed into gasoline, jet fuel and diesel.
The New Corolla loaded up in Iraq on Feb. 24 — just days before U.S. and Israeli forces launched attacks on Iran, plunging the region into turmoil and sparking a double blockade of commercial shipping.
In two weeks, the Hong Kong-flagged tanker will have fully unloaded at the Marathon Petroleum terminal and departed again for distant waters. After that, California must figure out how to replace some 200,000 barrels of oil a day that will no longer be arriving from the Persian Gulf.
If only they’d cared a few years earlier. But even then, they can’t be honest about it.
Come on, guys – it’s not ‘old fields’ causing a decline, and refining capacity didn’t simply ‘fall off.’
…California’s own supply of crude oil has been declining since the 1980s, due to aging fields and a geology that makes drilling particularly costly. The state’s gasoline refining capacity is also falling off, increasing reliance on imports and highlighting California’s status as an isolated energy island without gas pipelines to bring in supply from other states.
Now, with the end of the Middle East conflict nowhere in sight and the average cost of California gasoline topping $6 per gallon, some lawmakers are warning of potential oil and gas shortages.
OIL PRODUCTION AND REFINING CAPACITY WAS PURPOSEFULLY KILLED OFF
See how easy the truth is when you just speak it?
Never mind. They’re panicking.
They’ve just realized the state of affairs they’ve helped create over the decades of advocacy doesn’t leave the state with many options to dig itself out of this energy hole.
…Shipments that left before Iran blocked off the Strait of Hormuz in late February have continued to arrive on a one-to-two-month lag time, about the same time it takes for a tanker to make the voyage. But if the strait remains closed through May, “all bets are off,” said Ryan Cummings, chief of staff at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policymaking.
“Refineries have to source from elsewhere, and they are scrambling to find where to get that oil,” said Susan Bell, a senior vice president at the consulting firm Rystad Energy. “They don’t have very many options.”
It’s too early to say how California refineries — the state’s main crude oil importers — plan to backfill the loss of Persian Gulf oil.
Whoda thunk those oil-soaked green chickens would come home to roost?
The scramble is on.
…California also imports gasoline in amounts that have been sharply increasing since the Valero Benecia refinery went idle in February and the Phillips 66 Wilmington refinery went offline in December. The PBF Martinez refinery, taken out by a fire in February 2025, has yet to come back online. While in 2024 California imported about 10% of its gasoline, it now imports 20%.
The top California gasoline suppliers by far are South Korea, the Bahamas and India. As with oil, the shipments have continued to arrive through April, but that’s set to change.
South Korea has virtually suspended jet fuel shipments and cut back exports of gasoline and diesel. India has raised export duties on finished fuel products and is also sending out less. “We’re seeing very little on the water heading to the West Coast,” said Smith.
The Bahamas, where gasoline from the U.S. Gulf Coast gets rerouted, might pick up some of the slack, but how much remains to be seen. “There’s just a big question mark about where gasoline is going to be pulling in from next,” said Smith.
Where’s it to come from, and what will it cost when it gets here?
And being cultists at heart, there’s only one lesson to learn from this impending crisis, and it’s not the one you think.
I’d call it ‘The European Solution.’
…“Even in Texas, where they obviously have a huge amount of drilling and a lot of supply, prices are going up because the sellers are selling to whoever is paying the most during a moment of restriction, and everyone’s facing restrictions all over the place,” said Gordon. “The only way to be less dependent on this global system is to reduce oil demand.”
THE CHEAPEST ENERGY IS THE ONE YOU DON’T USE
🇪🇺 Ursula von der Leyen says Europeans can save money on gas by using candles and not driving:
“The cheapest energy is the one you don’t use. Stay home, don’t drive, don’t use electricity” pic.twitter.com/dMZRBeDrvF
— HOT SPOT (@HotSpotHotSpot) April 14, 2026
Well. Right next to the one you can’t get, I guess.
The last tanker truck driver had better be on his toes. Could be spicy.
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