Gas prices across California have skyrocketed over the last week, averaging $5.159 on Sunday against a national average of $3.450, with at least one station hitting $8.21. Now, California Republicans are calling on President Donald Trump to intervene, arguing the state's collapsing refinery infrastructure has become a national security crisis.
State Senator Suzette Valladares told the California Post on Sunday that the president may have grounds to act unilaterally:
"California is in a death spiral when it comes to our gas and oil prices. If the President sees our gas crisis as a national crisis he could step in."
The mechanism is already on the table. Trump could invoke the Defense Production Act of 1950 to override California laws and regulations blocking offshore oil operations in the state. A 22-page opinion written by the Department of Justice this week laid the groundwork, calling offshore rigs and pipelines a "critical energy resource on the West Coast" and concluding that a presidential order "would preempt the California laws currently impeding [Sable Offshore Corp] from resuming production and operating the associated pipeline infrastructure."
The legal path exists. The national security justification exists. The question is whether Sacramento's regulatory regime will force Washington's hand.
The calls for federal intervention come after two refineries announced they will be leaving California, compounding a crisis that has been building for years under Governor Gavin Newsom's regulatory agenda. According to the New York Post, Valladares placed the blame squarely on the governor:
"He signed regulation after regulation that got us here. Policy and unrealistic climate goals have put us in this position."
She added what should be obvious but apparently needs stating in Sacramento:
"This is not painless for the everyday working Californian. This impacts real people. He has the power to change this."
But Valladares does not expect Newsom to act. She has called on him to convene an emergency session on refinery closings, a request unlikely to gain traction from a governor she says is already looking past the job. Her assessment was blunt:
"He's going to leave this catastrophe to the next Governor because he's running for President. It'll be too late by then, when a refinery closes they don't come back."
That last line is the one that matters most. Refineries are not pop-up shops. They represent billions of dollars in capital investment, decades of permitting, and thousands of skilled jobs. When California's regulatory environment drives them out, the capacity doesn't sit in a warehouse waiting for better leadership. It's gone.
As if the current crisis weren't enough, a looming vote by the California Air Resources Board threatens to pile billions in new costs onto the state's remaining refineries. According to Valladares, refining costs "will essentially go up 1 dollar to $1.26," which she said would "absolutely decimate the California oil industry."
Chevron executive Andy Walz delivered the same warning in a blunt interview with KCRA on Thursday:
"If they add this burden … it's not whether refineries will close, it's when."
Walz pointed to instability in the Middle East and the threat of wider conflict involving Iran, making the timing of California's regulatory crusade all the more reckless:
"That makes no sense when you look at global tensions right now."
Meanwhile, Newsom has tried to blame California's gas prices on the conflict in Iran. It's a convenient deflection from a governor whose own policies have systematically strangled domestic production. Every other state faces the same global oil market. No other state averages nearly two dollars above the national price.
State Senator Tony Strickland has noted that California refineries supply gasoline and jet fuel to military installations throughout the state, most of which is currently produced by in-state refineries. The numbers underscore the point:
Valladares made the national security case explicit, arguing the administration "could use some sort of war order to at least keep up California production because of what's happening in the Middle East." California produces jet fuel for both commercial and military use. Losing that capacity doesn't just raise prices at the pump. It creates a strategic vulnerability.
This is what happens when climate ideology replaces energy policy. California's leaders set goals detached from physical and economic reality, layer mandates on top of mandates, and then express shock when the companies that actually produce energy decide the math no longer works. The refineries leave. The prices spike. And the politicians who caused the crisis blame geopolitics, speculators, or corporate greed.
The cycle is familiar because it is by design. Every regulation that makes production more expensive creates the next "market failure" that justifies the next regulation. The goal was never affordable energy. The goal was to make fossil fuels so expensive that Californians have no choice but to adopt whatever alternative Sacramento prescribes, regardless of cost, reliability, or readiness.
The people paying $5, $6, $8 a gallon didn't vote for that experiment. They're just living inside it.
The DOJ opinion is on the table. The Defense Production Act is on the books. California's working families are running out of room to absorb the consequences of their governor's ambitions. At some point, a state that cannot keep its own military bases fueled is no longer managing a policy disagreement. It's manufacturing a national security problem.
And that problem has a Sacramento return address.
