On high gas prices, Newsom tries to deflect the blame

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California continues to suffer from the highest gas prices in the nation, with prices in some regions still above $6 a gallon.

The state’s Division of Petroleum Market Oversight has officially released its list of scapegoats: President Trump, Iran, and branded gas stations like Chevron conspiring to “add to the pain at the pump.”

Conveniently missing from the indictment is the man who spent years taxing, regulating, restricting, suing, and otherwise making California one of the most hostile places in America to produce energy: Gov. Gavin Newsom (D).

The report conveniently avoids discussing Newsom’s nation-leading gas taxes, years-long regulatory onslaught and political war against villainous “Big Oil,” the refinery closures that followed, and all other unique-to-California policies that have steadily reduced fuel supply while increasing the cost of producing it.

It also comes weeks after Newsom’s widely mocked Memorial Day post on X instructing Californians to avoid Chevron stations and buy “unbranded gas” instead — as if California’s energy crisis has been a consumer-branding problem all along. How fortunate that the state’s supposedly independent petroleum watchdog later reached the exact same conclusion.

Unfortunately for Newsom, California’s tax code is a matter of public record. California’s $1.40 per gallon is the highest gas tax in the nation. California now makes more money off each gallon of gasoline sold than the refiners who are actually producing the gasoline.

And that extra $1.40 comes before accounting for the extra expenses of California’s boutique fuel mandates, its cap-and-trade regime, refinery restrictions, and lawfare campaigns charging billions of dollars to the oil and gas industry that helped build much of the state’s economy.

In recent years, Newsom has issued an executive order banning the sale of new gas-powered vehicles by 2035, significantly restricted oil and gas drilling, implemented sweeping emissions reduction mandates designed to cut fossil fuel consumption, extended the state’s Cap-and-Trade and Low Carbon Fuel Standard programs through 2045, and sued the oil industry for billions of dollars in damages for allegedly “lying to consumers for more than 50 years” about climate change. He also gave California energy regulators the authority to require oil companies to pay a penalty if their profits “climb too high.”

California has already lost roughly 20 percent of its refining capacity in just the few years since this crusade began. Phillips 66 closed its Los Angeles refinery in 2025, and Valero recently idled operations at its Benicia refinery in the Bay Area, together wiping out thousands of jobs and removing a major source of in-state fuel production. ExxonMobil exited onshore production in California altogether in 2023 after years of regulatory and permitting obstacles helped derail efforts to restart offshore operations, ending five decades of production off the Southern California coast.

And because California’s boutique fuel standards effectively turned the state into an isolated “fuel island” whose gasoline cannot easily be replaced by supply from neighboring states, every refinery closure or disruption now hits consumers especially hard.

It is also worth noting that California, once one of America’s top oil-producing states, now imports 60 percent of the crude supplied to its refineries from foreign countries, with roughly 30 percent coming from the Middle East.

Turns out, deliberately making yourself more dependent on foreign oil can leave you a little more exposed to geopolitical instability abroad.

All of this explains the increasingly untenable political position Newsom now finds himself in.

After years spent treating the oil industry as public enemy No. 1, he is suddenly confronting the entirely predictable consequences of making refining and gasoline production economically miserable. As his policies continue shrinking California’s in-state energy production, refinery closures compound, and drivers get hit with ever-higher gas taxes and environmental fees at the pump, Newsom now needs voters to believe the real culprits are Trump and the handful of oil companies still willing to operate in California.

Hence the timely report that ignores the mountain of taxes, mandates, restrictions, lawsuits, and regulatory costs Newsom has forced upon what remains of the industry.

Newsom will not reconsider the policies that helped make California one of the most expensive places in America to drive a car, run a business, or simply live. Californians are paying some of the highest gas prices in America because their government spent years systematically dismantling what was needed to provide cheap and abundant energy. No one should believe a report so obviously intended to redirect blame from where it belongs.

Jason Isaac is the CEO of The American Energy Institute.

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