Interior Sec. Doug Burgum Annihilates Gov. Newsom for Whining About Energy Prices Yet Purposefully DESTROYING Refineries

The average price for a gallon of regular gas in California Friday June 5, 2026 is $5.95 – nearly $6.00 per gallon! The national average is $4.22.

Two days ago, the national average was $4.26 per gallon of regular gas, and in California it was $5.99 per gallon. A gallon of mid-grade gas in California is $6.20, and a gallon of premium gas is $6.37. The highest price for gas in California is in Mono County at $7.03 per gallon of regular gas.

This isn’t “California Derangement Syndrome” as Governor Gavin Newsom would have you believe, as businesses and billionaires are fleeing the state, as well.

Even billionaires don’t want to spend unnecessarily on taxes, since most of them invented something and built a business.

While California’s governor and Democrat-dominated Legislature have ignored the oil and gas crisis they have inflicted on California, oil experts have been warning that California’s faux “climate crisis” was leading to gas and oil shortages, dramatically increasing gas prices and energy costs, and a national security crisis.

U.S. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum and U.S. Secretary of Energy Chris Wright spoke with Fox News earlier on Friday and discussed how safe, clean and efficient it is to drill offshore, as they arrived in Santa Barbara. Yet Gov. Gavin Newsom is doing everything he can to halt any and all offshore drilling off of the coast of California. Fortunately, the drilling off of the Santa Barbara Coast is in federal waters, so the California Governor doesn’t have authority.

Burgum said if you care about the environment, you should want to have the energy produced here in the U.S. “But California’s policies do one thing for sure. They raise the price of energy, including gasoline for every single Californian,” Burgum said. “Everybody needs to know in California the reason you’re paying more for gasoline than anybody else in the world. And the lower 48, more for diesel, is because of the state policies. It’s not because of some war overseas.”

Burgum said that it’s only going to get worse in California because Gov. Newsom and Democrats are regulating refineries out of existence. “There used to be 40 refineries in California. Then it was eight, then seven, then six. They’re putting so much pressure on!”

“California not only imports 60% of their oil from foreign countries. That is an absolute national security risk. The number one importer into California on February 1st of this year, 2026 was Iraq!” Burgum said.

 “So California has a policy. They’ve turned themselves into an energy desert, an energy island, raising prices, lowering national security.” 

“We’re here today because President Trump wants everyone to have affordable and secure prices for their energy, and that’s absolutely essential.”

Three independent oil corporations submitted letters to the Governor and CARB earlier this year stating that they will shutdown all six of their refineries and leave if the state refuses to negotiate with them on CARB’s proposed amendments.

Readers may remember in February the Globe reported that PBF Energy Inc. and its subsidiaries, which own and operate six domestic oil refineries, including two in Torrance and Martinez, laid bare the impending disaster the CARB could unleash on California. PBF sent a letter to the California Air Resources Board warning about “the stark reality the impacts the current CARB Cap & Investment program would have because of the state’s remaining 7 refineries. And, CARB’s “Proposed Amendments will only worsen the current state of the program, making costs skyrocket further. If enacted as written, the Proposed Amendments will inevitably drive in-state refining capacity to zero.”

PBF has a huge impact on fuels in California.

As the Globe said last week when reporting on the CARB amendments, “It will be interesting to see how the Trump administration weighs in on the latest CARB-approved amendments. California is not a sovereign nation, nor is it an island.”

As a Globe reader commented, “It seems as if they are trying to shut down domestic fuel before they are driven out of office and tarred and feathered! What is happening here is unprecedented. The whole of government is working against the public’s best interests.”