The Oil Industry Has Gaysom Newsom Over a Barrel

He now finds himself pleading with the beleaguered and vilified industry not to abandon the state. 

‘The oil industry has Newsom over a barrel” — that’s the headline of a new Politico piece about California’s chief executive, Gavin Newsom, who is now grappling with stark realities that the Golden State, a fuel-reserve mecca, is becoming a self-induced energy desert. 

It’s a fitting, if not inevitable, reckoning for a governor who spent years leading the Democratic Party’s scorched-earth crusade against fossil fuels, only to find himself now pleading with the beleaguered and vilified industry not to abandon the state. 

The flinching from Sacramento comes as oppressive, expensive policies have resulted in Phillips 66 and Valero announcing the shutting of their state-based oil refineries. 

Even a self-proclaimed climate-change crusader like Newsom realizes the deleterious consequences of less fuel for California’s millions of gas-dependent vehicles and the skyrocketing of already outrageous gas prices for ever-beleaguered California residents — which is why he’s pressing the California Energy Commission to cut the refineries slack to forestall their closures. 

California’s energy unraveling offers a preview of what happens when ideology overrides practical governance. And yet, against the backdrop of closing refineries, ideology cannot but help veering ever left. 

In addition to draconian laws, regulations, and executive orders, the left has intensified its thrill over employing climate lawfare in an effort to break up Big Oil and turn America into a land of windmills, solar panels, bicycles, and blackouts. 

If it all seems intentional — this progressive drive to steer the state, and the country, toward a brink of supply shortages, out-of-sight energy bills, economic strain, and significant national-security risks — it is.

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