This week, something quietly alarming happened in California.

Gas stations didn’t just raise prices.

Some of them shut their pumps off entirely.

No warning, no outage sign, just dark screens, yellow bags over the nozzles, and drivers turning around in disbelief.

And here’s the part that should get your attention right away.

When gas stations start shutting down in the largest fuel market in the United States, it’s not a coincidence, it’s a signal.

I’m Alex Lawson.

And before we dive into what’s really happening and why the governor of California is now finally responding, take a second to subscribe, turn on notifications, and share this video.

Because this story isn’t just about California.

It’s about what happens when energy policy collides with real world fuel systems, and you’re the one left paying for it.

Now, let me walk you through this step by step because what you’re seeing at the pump didn’t start this week.

And it didn’t start with one gas station owner making a bad decision.

It started years ago.

What happened this week was the visible symptom of a much deeper problem.

In multiple parts of California, from the central valley to pockets of Southern California, drivers reported arriving at stations that were either completely closed or selling fuel at a loss.

Some stations posted handwritten signs saying no gas.

Others simply locked the doors.

At first glance, that sounds like a supply outage.

But it wasn’t a tanker delay.

It wasn’t a pipeline rupture.

It wasn’t even a refinery fire.

It was economics.

According to industry estimates, independent gas station operators in California have been operating on razor thin margins for years.

In many cases, just pennies per gallon.

When wholesale prices spike even slightly and retail prices can’t adjust fast enough or are politically discouraged from doing so, stations don’t make money selling fuel.

They lose it.

And when selling gas costs more than not selling gas, some stations make the only decision left to them.

They shut down.

That’s the context behind the governor’s response.

Not a sudden crisis, but a slowmoving pressure cooker finally boiling over.

To understand how we got here, you need to understand how uniquely fragile California’s fuel system really is.

California is what energy analysts call a fuel island.

There are no major gasoline pipelines connecting California to the rest of the country.

You cannot simply send excess fuel from Texas or the Gulf Coast when supply tightens.

Everything happens inside a closed system.

Nearly all the gasoline used in California comes from instate refineries or from imported cargos.

is arriving by ship.

And that gasoline isn’t standard.

California requires a special blend, the often called carbob, designed to meet state air quality rules.

Only a limited number of refineries in the world can produce it.

That means when something goes wrong here, there is no quick fix.

Now, rewind the timeline.

Back in the early 1980s, California had more than 40 operating refineries.

Today, that number is down to around a dozen.

Over the last decade alone, the state has lost more than 20% of its refining capacity.

Some refineries were permanently shut down, others were converted to renewable fuel facilities, and several major operators publicly stated they were scaling back long-term investments in gasoline production.

In 2020, Philip 66 closed its rodeo refinery and later converted part of it to renewable diesel.

In 2021, Marathon shut down its Martinez refinery following an explosion and later restarted it in a different configuration.

In 2023 and 2024, multiple refineries announced reduced throughput or extended maintenance cycles.

Each individual decision made sense in isolation, but collectively they removed hundreds of thousands of barrels per day of gasoline producing capacity from the system.

Let that sink in for a moment.

California consumes roughly 13 to 14 million gallons of gasoline every single day.

When even 100,000 barrels per day of refining capacity disappears, that’s over 4 million gallons, the margin for error vanishes.

And here’s the key part politicians rarely say out loud.

Demand did not disappear at the same pace.

Despite aggressive electric vehicle mandates and long-term goals, tens of millions of Californians still drive gasoline powered cars, trucking, construction, agriculture, and emergency services still rely on liquid fuels.

So, what happens when supply shrinks, but demand remains, prices rise, and when prices rise fast enough, they break the retail level? By late 2024 and into 2025, wholesale gasoline prices in California were already consistently higher than the national average by 60 to 90 cents per gallon.

In some weeks, the gap exceeded a dollar.

At the same time, state regulators increased scrutiny on pricing behavior.

Political pressure mounted whenever retail prices jumped suddenly.

Gas stations were publicly blamed for price gouging, even as their own margins remained historically low.

that put station owners in an impossible position.

Raise prices quickly and face backlash investigations and reputational damage or hold prices steady and sell fuel at a loss.

Some tried to hang on, others couldn’t.

That’s why you saw stations shut down, not because there was no gasoline in California, but because selling it no longer made economic sense.

Now, after weeks of mounting pressure, the governor finally responded.

In public statements, the governor emphasized oversight, transparency, and the need to protect consumers from volatility.

He pointed to ongoing investigations into market behavior and reaffirmed the state’s commitment to its long-term energy transition.

But here’s what was missing.

There was no acknowledgement of the structural supply problem, no mention of lost refining capacity, no mention of California’s isolation from national fuel markets, no mention of the growing dependence on imported gasoline.

And that omission matters because as refineries reduce output or shut down entirely, California increasingly relies on fuel shipped from overseas.

Tankers from Asia and the Middle East now regularly deliver gasoline to West Coast ports.

These shipments take weeks.

They cost more.

They burn fuel to transport fuel and they arrive into a market with no buffer.

In 2010, California imported less than 5% of its gasoline.

In recent years, that number has fluctuated between 10 and 20% depending on refinery outages.

Every imported barrel increases exposure to global disruptions, weather, geopolitics, shipping delays.

That’s not a theory.

We’ve already seen it happen.

When refineries went down during heat waves, when storms disrupted shipping lanes, when international fuel markets tightened, each time prices spiked faster and higher than almost anywhere else in the country.

And now with fewer retail stations able to absorb volatility, the system is even more brittle.

This is where the human impact becomes impossible to ignore.

If you’re a commuter driving 15,000 m a year, paying an extra $1 per gallon adds up to roughly $600 to $800 annually.

For many families, that’s groceries.

That’s utilities.

That’s the margin between getting ahead and falling behind.

For small businesses, landscapers, delivery drivers, contractors, fuel is not optional.

It’s a fixed cost that eats directly into income.

When stations shut down, those costs don’t disappear.

They concentrate.

Drivers are forced to travel farther.

Lines grow longer.

The remaining stations gain pricing power.

And suddenly, a localized shutdown becomes a regional price spike.

This isn’t a conspiracy theory.

It’s basic supply and demand playing out in a tightly constrained system.

And here’s the uncomfortable lesson.

Energy transitions don’t happen in press releases.

They happen in infrastructure.

You can mandate electric vehicles.

You can set ambitious emissions targets.

But if you don’t manage the decline of legacy fuel systems carefully, maintaining enough supply during the transition, you create instability.

When refineries can’t justify long-term investments, they scale back.

When margins are squeezed at every level, retail breaks.

And when retail breaks, drivers feel it immediately.

The irony here is that California didn’t become cleaner overnight, but it did become more dependent overnight, dependent on imported fuel, global markets, and fragile supply chains.

Other states are watching this closely because what’s happening in California today is a preview of what happens when policy moves faster than infrastructure can adapt.

The governor’s response may calm headlines for now, but it doesn’t change the math.

Less refining capacity plus steady demand equals higher prices.

Add political pressure and retail shutdowns and volatility becomes the norm.

The real question isn’t whether prices will spike again, it’s when and how many more stations decide they can’t afford to keep the lights on before someone finally acknowledges the core problem.

If you want more clear datadriven breakdowns of what’s really happening in energy markets without the talking points, subscribe to the channel.

Share this video with someone who’s feeling it at the pump.

And let me know in the comments what gas prices look like where you live and whether you’ve seen stations shutting down near you.

Because until we start talking honestly about supply policy and reality, this story isn’t