California’s high gas prices are Gavin Newsom’s fault — and a gift to China

California’s absurd energy policy makes sure that its residents pay the highest gas prices and nearly the highest electricity prices in the nation. And it’s not oil companies that benefit most. It’s China.

As soon as the Strait of Hormuz closed closed during the current war with Iran, gas prices raced toward $6 a gallon, with Gov. Gavin Newsom attempting to shift blame to oil company “greed,” market “speculation,” and global turmoil. He refused to take any responsibility for the role his own policies played.

Over the past two decades, Californians watched our refinery count fall from 20 to 11, as facilities shut down under burdensome regulations and costs. At the same time, state officials required that gas stations sell a boutique recipe used by almost no one else in the country. This meant that supply from the Gulf Coast or Midwest could not be rerouted to the West Coast in an emergency. 

When Phillips 66 walked away from its LA-area refinery last year, and Valero announced the closure of its Benicia facility this year, California lost roughly 17 percent of its refining capacity in under two years.

Thanks to Newsom, a state of nearly 40 million people is backed into a corner. California burns more gasoline than it can refine, and must import a growing share of that fuel by sea from Asia. The Institute For Energy Research recently noted that California is now importing 20% of its gasoline from Asian refineries, and imports of refined products are up 36% this year.  

It’s not exactly “green” to be shipping gas across the Pacific Ocean. 

More importantly, Newsom’s conscious policy choices have left California increasingly dependent on overseas suppliers operating in volatile, geopolitically exposed markets.

Now put that risky setup next to what Beijing has been building. The U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission has documented an “Axis of Autocracy,” a tight web of financial and political ties between China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea. China purchases roughly 90 percent of Iran’s exported oil, delivering tens of billions of dollars a year to a regime that funds terror proxies and threatens our troops. 

China also buys discounted Russian energy to keep Vladimir Putin’s war machine afloat, and in return helps Russia evade sanctions to obtain weapons and money. 

While Sacramento was shrinking our refining base and pushing production across the Pacific, Beijing was constructing the global energy and finance system that could exploit those choices. 

California did not just decide to buy more gasoline from Asia. It chose to rely on a part of the world where China is the central buyer of Iranian oil and a key broker of Russian energy deals.

Furthermore, over a quarter of California’s foreign imports last year came from Iraq and Saudi Arabia. That ment that when the Strait of Hormuz closed, tankers carrying California’s specialized gasoline blend were stuck, and refineries in other states had no pipeline to send us replacement fuel. 

Soon, prices shot up and warnings followed that the full impact had not even hit yet. Yes, the Iran war was the cause, as Newsom claimed, but California’s energy choices made prices much worse than they ought to have been. 

Other states, with more diversified and flexible supply chains, had options. California did not. It had a boutique fuel and a shrinking local industry. 

It’s important to hold Beijing accountable for bankrolling our adversaries, but it does not excuse what Sacramento has done. 

California officials chose to close refineries faster than demand was falling. They chose to demand a one-of-a-kind fuel blend that few refiners produce. They chose to shrug at warnings that shrinking instate capacity and betting on imports would leave our drivers badly exposed the moment something went wrong overseas. They made these choices while China was building a system that could make an American energy crisis even worse.

A state with a robust domestic refining base and flexible rules would not be hit this hard by a single chokepoint like the Strait of Hormuz. California is vulnerable by design, and ordinary people are now paying a premium for the governor’s misguided narrative about fuel prices.

Californians do not need another speech blaming oil companies for a mess the governor’s ideology created. 

We need leaders who admit that supply resilience matters, and who stop ceding control of our fuel supply to hostile foreign governments.

Hon. Will O’Neill was Mayor of Newport Beach and is currently the Chairman of the Republican Party of Orange County.