California Had Oil. Gavin Newsom Chose Scarcity. Trump: Drill, Baby, Drill!
Despite Newsom and company throwing up every road block, the Trump Administration ensured that an offshore oil drilling platform on the Central Coast was put back into action...
You can also listen to this post — along with my California Our morning content is free for all subscribers and guests! You can also listen to this post — along with my California Post column — on our podcast feed, So, Does It Matter? SPOKEN. It’s available on your favorite podcasting app. You can listen directly here.
⏱️ 3.5 min read
Sacramento’s Energy War
California used to help power America. In the early 1900s, it was the nation’s leading oil-producing state, and by 1985, it was producing about 1.1 million barrels a day. By January of this year, that figure had fallen to 244,000 barrels a day. California did not stop needing oil. It stopped producing much of its own.
That was not an accident.
It was a choice.
And ordinary Californians are paying for it every time they pull up to the pump. As of yesterday, AAA’s statewide average for regular was $5.929 a gallon, compared to a national average of $4.166. Yes, prices are up across the country because of turmoil in the Middle East. But California drivers are still being punished far more than everyone else. That extra pain is not an accident. It is the price of Sacramento’s energy war.
President Trump To The Rescue
That is why President Donald Trump deserves credit for getting the Sable offshore site pumping again. On March 13, the Trump administration used Defense Production Act authority, with Energy Secretary Chris Wright directing Sable Offshore to restore operations at the Santa Ynez Unit and pipeline system. The stated reason was supply disruption risk caused by California policies that had left the region more dependent on foreign oil.
He did what California’s own leaders refused to do. He acted because Sacramento state regulators, local officials, and the professional environmental lobby spent years doing everything possible to choke off one more chance to produce oil in this state.
Delay it. Sue it. Smother it in red tape. Then pretend high gas prices just somehow happen.
That has been the Gavin Newsom formula from the beginning. Attack supply. Restrict production. Drive refiners out. Punish the industry. Then blame somebody else when the price of living keeps going up.
Look at the larger picture. The Department of Energy says restarting Sable will result in about a 15 percent increase in California's in-state oil production and replace nearly 1.5 million barrels of foreign crude each month. That is not trivial. That is a reminder of how much damage California’s ruling class has already done.
And it is not the rich donors, government officials, or environmental activists who bear the cost. It is working people. It is commuters. It is families trying to juggle rent, groceries, insurance, and utility bills in a state already crushing them with costs.
It is easy for celebrity activists and affluent coastal elites to grandstand against oil production when they are not the ones sweating the cost of a fill-up. In Santa Barbara, actress and resident Julia Louis-Dreyfus joined the anti-Sable campaign, declaring, “I can smell a rat. And this project is a rat.” That is how this fight has gone in California: working people get higher costs, while wealthy liberals along the coast get to feel righteous.
So, Does It Matter?
What happened at Sable never should have required presidential intervention. That is the scandal. This is oil off California’s own coast, a lawful domestic resource, a source of energy, jobs, tax revenue, and badly needed supply. Yet Gavin Newsom’s California treated it like contraband.
Even now, Newsom is still opposing the restart. He called the move “reckless and illegal.” And with all of the advances in pipeline monitoring, corrosion control, and shutdown technology, Californians are supposed to believe it is somehow more responsible to import more oil by tanker from overseas than to produce more of it here under modern safety standards.
This state does not have an oil shortage.
It has a leadership shortage.