By Issues & Insights Editorial Board | July 16, 2025
It might be smart for oil and gas industry executives to start planning to pack up for a complete pullout from California. Or to at least notify government officials that their exit is being seriously contemplated. It’s not easy to operate a business that has been declared unofficially, but effectively, an enemy of the state.
The vilification began before Gavin Newsom became governor, but it’s been noted that under his “leadership,” the state has become determined to leave its bounty of crude in the ground.
“California would be the biggest oil producer in the world and the first U.S. state to plan a managed decline for the sector,” Climate News Now reported in 2021. At that time, it was producing 394 million barrels a day, “making it the seventh biggest U.S. state oil producer,” and the 27th biggest oil producer in the world if it were its own country.
To this end, lawmakers in Sacramento have introduced legislation, the Polluters Pay Climate Superfund Act, Senate Bill 684. It would set up a climate superfund program that would “require fossil fuel polluters to pay their fair share of the damage caused by greenhouse gases released into the atmosphere” between the 1990 and 2024 calendar years.
“Fair share” is an impossible benchmark to establish, as it is utterly subjective, and there’s no evidence, only speculation, that greenhouse gas emissions had damaged anything. These disputes need to be discussed in the open, but they have instead been weaponized for a state that is bent on wiping out an industry that was not only crucial to its booming growth, but also plays a consequential role in its present and is a necessary cornerstone of its future.
Maybe SB 684 is a multipurpose measure. One, it allows lawmakers to bleed the oil industry of its financial resources. California legislators have long regarded businesses as never-ending fonts of dollars to pay for their unbridled spending.
Two, it’s an unwelcome mat for the oil industry, another piece of the “managed decline.”
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