Chevron Exit Demonstrates How California Lawmakers Are Regulating Residents Out Of Business 

The announcement of another major corporation leaving California is just the latest illustration of Sacramento lawmakers regulating residents out of business.

On Friday, the iconic California oil giant formerly known as Standard Oil will mark the 145th anniversary of its west coast founding by leaving it for Texas. The major oil producer and refiner joins a growing list of companies spearheading a corporate exodus from the state including X/Twitter, Space X, Oracle, Hewlett Packard, Charles Schwab, and Toyota Motor North America, all of which have either already relocated or made plans to relocate in Texas. Chevron currently employs roughly 2,000 employees in San Ramon who are likely impacted.

In January, Chevron executive Andy Walz warned his company’s home state legislators were playing a “dangerous game” with strict regulatory regimes that hinder operations and spike gas prices with Californians paying more at the pump than anywhere else in the country. While California has the highest number of registered electric vehicles in the United States, the state remains the second largest consumer of gasoline, according to the U.S. Department of Energy. State leadership’s aggressive pursuit of far-left environmental agendas, however, have jeopardized a reliable energy industry and with it, a sustainable economy.

Refiners, Walz said, “are making decisions that are kind of putting us on a pathway where there could be a reliability problem.”

“You may not have the supply of gasoline if things don’t turn out the way the government wants them to,” Walz added. “It’s a dangerous game.”

Democrat Gov. Gavin Newsom wants California to achieve net-zero emissions by 2045, which is five years before most other states with similar goals. Two years ago, state regulators banned new sales of combustion vehicles even earlier, by 2035. The new stipulations from the California Air Resources Board were handed down in an episode of irony wherein owners of electric cars were urged not to charge them amid a heat wave which hit the western U.S. a week later.

Last year, the governor launched what the Washington Times characterized as a “litigation-and-legislation blitz” to antagonize the fossil fuel industry on behalf of the Democrats’ environmental base, “shoring up his green energy credentials amid criticism that his administration has failed to walk the talk when it comes to ditching fossil fuels.”

“The Democratic governor jumped on the climate lawsuit bandwagon by announcing that California has sued five major energy companies — Exxon, Chevron, BP, ConocoPhillips and Shell,” the Times reported, with Newsom “arguing that their ‘lies and coverups’ about fossil fuels have cost the state billions in damages from natural disasters and increased health care costs.”

“Adding insult to injury,” California Globe Editor Katy Grimes wrote Saturday, “Newsom appointed Tai Milder his ‘Oil Czar,’ to lead the state’s investigation into California’s perpetually high gasoline prices,” which the governor blamed on “price gouging.” Except that the California Energy Commission (CEC) blamed high prices on “refineries temporarily going out of commission because not enough oil was getting to them.”

“The CEC also said that lower prices this year were caused by many factors, including a cut in industry costs and profits, lower crude oil costs, and in how much environmental programs are getting from the industry,’ Grimes reported.

The Chevron exit was foreshadowed by California Republican Assembly Leader James Gallagher, who warned in an interview with The Globe just three weeks ago that more job producers would likely follow Elon Musk’s decision to flee the state. Musk announced in July he would move the corporate headquarters for X and SpaceX to Texas following the cascade of legislation alienating businesses and parents alike from far-left legislators. While Chevron’s exit is marked by animus towards the fossil fuel industry, Musk’s decision was explicitly provoked by a new law prohibiting schools from mandating parental notification of students who embrace a novel sexual identity.

“We’ve already seen a lot of businesses leaving California for states like Texas,” Gallagher told The Globe in mid-July. “There’s going to be more to come and it already has done damage to us. We lost a congressional seat because we’ve had so many people moving out of California.”