Severin Borenstein on California’s Current Relationship With Big Oil

California Considers More Drilling and Other Concessions to Big Oil as Refineries Plan to Close

August 7, 2025

KQED

Severin Borenstein, Energy Institute Faculty Director, looks at California’s relationship with Big Oil as it moves toward clean energy on KQED.

“If you look at the spot price the wholesale price of gasoline in California  it’s really not out of line with the rest of the country once you account for the cost of making our cleaner-burning gasoline. We do have a real gasoline price problem, beyond the higher taxes and environmental fees, and that’s happening downstream. So I think it’s unfortunate that a lot of people in Sacramento were saying the problem is these refineries are making too much money. The closure of these refineries now suggests that was clearly wrong  that, in fact, they don’t think they can make enough money…All of this is happening in the context of California’s major push to reduce gasoline consumption which has finally started to take hold.”

Photo: kqed.org