California's combined gasoline and crude oil inventories have fallen to just nine to ten days of supply, as much as 30% below normal when adjusted for reduced imports, and two university professors warn the state faces severe shortages of crude, jet fuel, and gasoline within a month.
The warning comes from a paper published Wednesday by Dr. Michael Mische, a professor of management at the University of Southern California, and Dr. James Rector, a professor of engineering at the University of California Berkeley, along with graduate assistant Joseph Silvi. Their analysis, reported by Just the News, calls on the Trump administration to invoke the Defense Production Act and issue executive orders to prevent the nation's largest state economy from dragging the rest of the country into a fuel crisis.
The stakes are not confined to California. Nevada draws roughly 80% of its gasoline from the Golden State. Arizona gets nearly half. California is home to a dozen ports, and its economy accounts for nearly 15% of the entire U.S. GDP. A fuel collapse there would ripple through air travel, military operations, shipping, and commerce across the western United States.
Before adjusting for the impact of the ongoing conflict in Iran, the professors found California's inventories were already as much as 20% below historical norms. Once they factored in reduced imports driven by that conflict, the deficit widened to an estimated 30% below normal.
Mische did not mince words when he appeared on the "Energy Impacts Podcast" Thursday:
"Frankly, we're running out of fuel as we speak."
Even if petroleum exports began flowing normally today, Mische said, it would take a couple of months before shortfalls could be addressed. That timeline matters. Californians were already paying $5.86 per gallon on average Thursday, according to AAA. The professors warn that prices could climb as high as $15 per gallon if the supply picture does not change.
Adding to the pressure, the Valero refinery shut down operations in April. Restarting refineries is not a flip-the-switch proposition; the paper notes the logistical difficulty of shipping fuel by rail or truck in a state that lacks adequate pipeline infrastructure.
California's lawmakers and Gov. Gavin Newsom have shown no willingness to change course on the climate policies that helped create these conditions. Mische testified before the state Senate in March in support of a bill that would have eased some of California's gas taxes and rolled back the low-carbon fuel standard. He estimated the bill would have taken about $1.08 per gallon off the price of gasoline.
The bill did not make it out of committee.
Mische described the hearing in blunt terms, saying he was astonished by the reaction from Democratic members of the Senate Environmental Quality Committee:
"I was stunned. As an educator, I was stunned because not one Democrat, not one Democrat, on that committee, including the chairwoman, asked me a question about any of that stuff, not one question. Nobody was interested in bringing the price of gas down."
He said the committee's Democratic chair, Sen. Catherine Blakespear, was instead concerned that rolling back taxes would deprive the state of funding for climate programs. The priorities were clear: Sacramento would rather protect green spending than lower the cost of filling a tank.
The state has previously drawn sharp criticism from the oil industry over billions in extra costs imposed on fuel producers, costs that flow directly to consumers at the pump.
Mische offered his own read on the legislature's posture:
"They want this. They want to force people to adopt EVs."
He also noted that cap-and-trade revenue in California gets directed to what he called "sustainable housing." His assessment was characteristically direct:
"Nobody knows what the h*** sustainable housing is, but that's where the money goes."
This is not the first time Mische has raised alarms. Last year, he was quoted in the media warning Newsom that the state's energy policies would drive up gasoline prices. The governor's office responded not with data or a policy rebuttal but by claiming Mische was "bankrolled by Saudi Arabia."
That kind of deflection is a pattern, not an accident. When a USC professor with co-authors from Berkeley presents an inventory analysis and the governor's office responds with a smear, the public should ask which side is doing the homework and which side is doing damage control.
Newsom's broader leadership record has drawn scrutiny on other fronts as well. His press office faced criticism for its own political missteps, raising questions about the judgment driving communications out of Sacramento.
The Trump administration has not been idle. Last month, the president signed an executive order amending an earlier declaration of a national energy emergency. The amended order included the Secretary of Energy in the delegation of presidential authority to exercise emergency powers.
Energy Secretary Chris Wright used that authority to resume operations at the Santa Ynez Unit, an offshore and onshore facility owned by Sable Offshore Corp. The unit is now pumping 50,000 barrels of oil per day into California, a meaningful addition to a state desperate for supply.
In March, the Department of Justice issued a legal opinion arguing that under the Defense Production Act, the federal government could supersede state law. That opinion provides the legal scaffolding for the kind of executive orders the professors propose in their paper.
But California Attorney General Rob Bonta has filed two lawsuits so far to stop oil from the Santa Ynez Unit from reaching consumers. Read that again: the state's top law enforcement officer is going to court to block fuel from reaching a market where drivers are paying nearly six dollars a gallon and inventories sit at crisis levels.
Mische said he does not believe Bonta's legal actions will succeed. Whether he is right remains to be seen, but the spectacle of a state attorney general suing to keep oil off the market during a supply emergency tells you everything about Sacramento's priorities.
Meanwhile, at the national level, record U.S. energy production in 2025 has delivered on a core Trump campaign pledge. The contrast between federal energy policy and California's self-imposed scarcity could not be sharper.
The paper proposes a series of executive orders that would allow more offshore oil production, remove the low-carbon fuel standard, revoke state and local oil and gas development restrictions, federalize permitting of most of California's oil and gas infrastructure, and direct Energy Secretary Wright to enter into a lease and operating agreement to acquire the shuttered Valero refinery.
Those are aggressive steps. They would represent a direct federal override of California's regulatory apparatus. But the professors frame the situation in national security terms, and the numbers support the urgency. California is not some isolated market. Its ports, its military bases, its share of the national economy, all of it depends on fuel that the state government has spent years making harder to produce, refine, and deliver.
Mische put his confidence in the federal government plainly:
"Since the governor can't fix it, is incapable of fixing it, maybe he's not smart enough to fix it, President Trump will fix it. And I have full faith and confidence in that."
California has also been the site of other governance failures that compound public frustration. A deadly explosion in Yolo County recently led to murder charges against a former sheriff's lieutenant, a reminder that regulatory oversight in the state is not always what officials claim it to be.
Mische's timeline is stark. He said California is roughly two months away from a full-blown shortfall even under the best scenario, and within a month under current conditions. The war in Iran continues to constrain global supply. The Valero refinery sits idle. Bonta's lawsuits aim to block the one new source of domestic production the federal government has managed to bring online.
California's political class has spent years building a regulatory fortress around its climate agenda. They taxed fuel, restricted drilling, drove Chevron's headquarters to Texas, and treated every barrel of oil as a political enemy. Now the fortress is keeping supply out, and the people trapped inside are the ones paying the price.
The question is not whether California's energy policies have failed. The question is whether the rest of the country will be forced to share in the consequences.
When your state has nine days of fuel on hand and your attorney general is suing to keep more from arriving, the problem is not the oil market. The problem is the people running the state.
