Audrey Streb
DCNF Energy Reporter
Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a set of energy bills Friday with the goal of lowering energy costs and stabilizing gas supply after years of allowing strict regulations to clamp down on the state’s oil and gas industry.
The set of bills were designed to “stabilize” California’s gasoline market by paving the way for more oil development in Kern County as well as working to “encourage” oil refiners to continue operations, though they will also keep California’s high speed rail project and its cap-and-trade program alive, according to Newsom’s office. Two major California refineries are gearing up to shut down after Democratic officials enforced stringent regulations that have helped prompt closures across the state for years while Newsom has previously sued and demonized energy companies.
“The Legislature recognizes the significance of oil and gas production in the County of Kern, while also affirming the state’s commitment to protecting public health, safety, and environmental quality, particularly for communities located near oil and gas operations,” one of the bill text states. (RELATED: Newsom Singing New Tune On Big Oil With Potential Gas Crisis, 2028 Run Looming)
NEW: @CAGovernor Gavin Newsom just signed bipartisan bills into laws to lower Californians’ electricity costs, stabilize our state’s gas supply, & provide a stable source of investment for @CaHSRA.
Californians will soon start saving on energy bills & more! pic.twitter.com/R5M9lpkMe8
— Governor Newsom Press Office (@GovPressOffice) September 19, 2025
Environmental activists have long opposed drilling in oil-rich Kern County, and Newsom previously aligned with them — even joining celebrities and activists in May 2024 to advocate for a law limiting oil wells. Democratic California officials have unleashed regulators, allowing them to place strict rules on the oil and gas industry as the state still marches toward the goal of net-zero emissions by 2045.
Two major California oil refineries, including Valero and Phillips 66, are preparing to close in the next year. One analysis projects that these closures may bump California gas prices to $8 a gallon, while consumers already shell out for some of America’s priciest gas rates and pay the highest gas tax in the country.
“Millions of Californians will soon start saving billions on their energy costs, and the savings don’t stop there – we’re stabilizing the state’s gasoline supply to avert severe price spikes at the pump and we’re making it easier to build the abundant clean energy we need to keep bills lower,” Newsom said Friday. “On top of all that, we’re doubling down on our best tool to combat Trump’s assaults on clean air – Cap-and-Invest – by making polluters pay for projects that support our most impacted communities.”
Newsom also signed a bill in October 2024 that mandated oil refineries to store additional gas to help skirt shortages.
“They continue to lie, and they continue to manipulate. They have been raking in unprecedented profits because they can,” Newsom said as he signed the bill, criticizing the oil and gas industry. “They’ve been screwing you for years and years and years.”
Additionally, Newsom’s administration filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration almost immediately after President Donald Trump signed resolutions to terminate California’s de facto national electric vehicle (EV) mandate in June. California also filed a 2023 lawsuit against major oil and gas companies in the state over alleged climate change-related damages.
“For more than 50 years, Big Oil has been lying to us – covering up the fact that they’ve long known how dangerous the fossil fuels they produce are for our planet,” Newsom said at the time, arguing that oil companies should help cover the cleanup costs of wildfires and other weather events supposedly linked to climate change.
One of the bills also extends California’s “cap-and-trade” program, which is frequently cited as an example of an aggressive regulation driving refineries out of the state. The program requires natural gas power plants, coal power plants and other companies to purchase allowances to offset emissions, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA).
Analysts have warned that Californians could see a steep gas price hike in the coming years, driven by the reauthorization of the cap-and-trade program as well as the refinery closures.
“After years of pushing radical climate policies that punished working families, Governor Newsom is finally waking up to what Californians need, he’s now scrambling to secure the very fossil fuels he tried to eliminate,” CEO of the American Energy Institute Jason Isaac told the Daily Caller News Foundation previously. “This sudden embrace of petroleum isn’t leadership, it’s survival. California’s energy future depends on realism, not green delusions.”
Notably, Newsom’s office claims that one of the bills will make “high-speed rail a reality by providing its first-ever stable source of funding.” California’s high speed rail project is billions over budget and years behind schedule, though recent polling shows that many residents still believe that the project can be completed.
Newsom’s office referred the DCNF to its press release.
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This is actually relevant.
Dwight also covered Mike Stinson’s “The Late Great Golden State”
Mike Stinson’s “The Late Great Golden State”
“This sudden embrace of petroleum isn’t leadership, it’s survival. California’s energy future depends on realism, not green delusions.”
Sounds like the pollical lever of the Hockey Stick isn’t working anymore for “The Cause”.
Reality bites.
Reverting back to just politics.
So what does this make Newsom? A hypocrite? A liar? or both?
A politician. Hypocrite, liar, and scam artist. A rare few in politics are not politicians.
Both, and more…lyin’ POS is where I’d begin, followed by idiot.
Newsom is just an idiot. All you have to do to deduce this is to watch what he does. There really isn’t anything else that needs to be said.
California has been forcing 400,000 per year, taxpaying citizens, to escape to other states, due to crazy rules regulations and replaced them with millions of government-tit-sucking walk-ins, and closing power plants and refineries and nuclear plants and insurance companies, and industrial companies, for at least 2 decades.
This led to the election of Pelosi, Newscum, and Barr, and hundreds other idiot scum like them.
Finally, they are suffocating in deep do do, and want the federal government to bail them out.
Trump will not give them on penny, plus will take away the federal subsidy largesse of the Obama and Biden eras
Does anyone know why those big nasty oil companies can sell gas far more cheaply in other states compared to California? Why does Big Oil only want to screw Californians?
Could it possibly be that Newsom has been the one lying and screwing his citizens?
Cost of regulations are much higher here, plus massive taxes.
Check out the Newsom and Brown family connections to imported foreign oil for your answer.
I don’t understand how this knuckledraggers keeps getting elected. He and all of his Democrat cronies are to blame for this stinking mess.
Because all the sensible people are fleeing California. That state leads the country in net out-migration. The middle and working classes are fleeing the state, abandoning it to the assorted Hollywood socialist pimps and hordes of uneducated and unemployable migrants.
Of course the Democrats are to blame. This situation of creating a permanent under-class wholly dependent upon government program support ensures that Newscum will get elected as long as he wants. The only way California can be saved from itself is if the San Andreas decides to get really angry one day and wipe the slate clean.
Newsom has term-limited out of the Governor’s office. ‘Course, that just opens the opportunity foir another Democrat to waltz into the office. Maybe Katie Porter.
It’s because most Californians are all about superficial virtue signaling and they go for the bright and shiny stuff regardless of reality.
And free stuff
AAA reports gas price in CA is $4.659 (average for State) and $5.869 in Mono County. That’s a remote site. Up in Humboldt Cty it is $5.134. Washington State average is the same but only the islands exceed $5.
Both states have a “climate indulgence” law.
Audrey Streb, or another Daily Caller writer, should do a post next Equinox.
There ought to be a betting pool regarding the decline in the price a year from now.
[If I knew I was going to be in the same room with Gov Gav, I’d wear tall boots.]
Driving around the WA peninsula this weekend and regular grade is above $5/gal.
Too much money in California for the people to care. High salaries trickle down to subsistence workers that make ends meet and they still send money home to their families. Everyone in my neighborhood, but me, has house cleaners and gardeners. Housing costs are astronomical but again, no one cares. AGW? They believe what the MSM tells them. All the jokes and snide remarks about California are true. They get what they deserve.
It’s interesting to note that refiners make poor profits relative to the investment required to be in that business. If you can get a 6% ROI you’re killing it. If those two refiners are take everyone to the cleaners then why shut down such profitable businesses?
Newsom knows this. Yet so many bobble heads out there can’t connect the dots.
Really nothing more than Gruesome Newsom trying his hardest to be the best potential candidate in 2028. Too little too late.
He is “prettier” than Kamala, and more “manly” than Walz! 😉
Although “they” has been working on the Walz “jazz hands”.
He is “prettier” than Kamala, and more “
manly” “masculine” than Walz!FIFY. The rabid left hate that word (it’s toxic, doncha know).
They’re not fond of masculinity either.
https://adaa.org/learn-from-us/from-the-experts/blog-posts/consumer/what-toxic-masculinity-and-how-it-impacts-mental
If Walz is such a good hunter, why does he shot himself in the foot?
Bryan A: “Really nothing more than Gruesome Newsom trying his hardest to be the best potential candidate in 2028. Too little too late.”
Gavin Newsom is currently the odds-on favorite to become the Democratic Party’s 2028 nominee for president.
His record in office as California governor is completely immaterial to those who will be voting for him.
He has a pretty face, he has what is essentially a Hollywood actor’s voice, and he has the Pelosi political money machine behind him.
All this is more than than anyone else in the Democratic Party has at this point in the 2028 election cycle Game of Thrones.
After the EPA rescinds the 2009 CO2 Endangerment Finding (EF), whatever will Gov. Gavin N. and Gov Kathy H. of NY do? They will have
to eat humble pie, repeal their climate laws and abandon their climate agendas.
However, it will be several or more months before the EPA issues an announcement rescinding the EF. After the two refineries shut down Gov. Gavin can import gas from Mexico for only 97 cents per gallon. He will also bring in Diesel fuel for the firetrucks and emergency power generating systems.
Interesting times are ahead.
“Gov. Gavin can import gas from Mexico for only 97 cents per gallon.”
Not if they cannot make the special California blend of gasoline.
Just smuggle it across the border. Once it becomes an illegal immigrant, they will love it.
thread winner.
California gasoline is a special blend unique to California. I doubt that that blend is made in Mexico, or can be made there without significant modification to the refinery.
Is there a gasoline pipeline from Mexico? It takes one entire tanker truck to resupply one average gas station, and an average gas station requires one fill-up per day. The trucks can service a few stations per day, going back to a supply depot to refill their tanks. There aren’t enough tanker trucks in the world to make all those round trips to Mexico.
Passing measures to increase the production of petroleum products is rather pointless if the refineries are closing. But, then, our politicians, and voters, aren’t the brightest lights in the room.
I’m starting to support Gavin for President in 2028. He can stop illegal immigration by making the entire country such a craphole that no one from other countries will want to immigrate here.
Don’t California my country!
My son lives in LA and says he really doesn’t spend that much money on gas because it usually takes him 30 minutes (and sometimes more) to drive 3 miles. So the number of miles he drives a week is pretty low.
At that pace an electricity taxi might make sense. Becoming one of the Lycra brigade is probably too risky in LA.
Silly me. This sounds like the good old “you show me yours and I’ll show you mine.”
With apologies to all.
I am a small investor in several energy companies. I wouldn’t buy any stock in an energy company that would make new investments in California. One would have to wonder how sane the Board was to make such a decision. Btw, I bought stock in Peabody Energy (BTU), a large coal producer, at the start of the year. I am now up 72.5%. It’s pretty clear NG is about to join the party. Just my opinion.