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Oil drillers in California have resorted to the costly alternative of trucking crude barrels 50 miles after the closure of a refinery and idling of a key pipeline cut off outlets for their products.

The fuel-making plant has been slated to close since 2024 and the facility, once capable of processing 139,000 barrels of oil a day, refined its final barrel of crude in late 2025.

A massive winter storm that swept the U.S. over the weekend crippled oil and gas producers and the industrial plants that refine the raw commodities into everything from gasoline to plastics.

Valero plans to begin shutting some of the Benicia refinery operating units in February before fully winding it down by the end of April.

U.S. federal and state officials are lining up with the oil industry to support a plan by Phillips 66 and Kinder Morgan to deliver gasoline to California.

Gasoline prices across the U.S. on Dec. 1 averaged $3 a gallon, according to American Automobile Association data. That's well above President Donald Trump’s pledge to bring the price below $2.

The pipeline project will carry fuels from as far away as the Midwest to augment supplies sent by refiners in Washington state and Asia. 

The bill marks a sharp shift from years of regulatory scrutiny by the state’s lawmakers toward its oil and gas industry and decades of declining in-state crude production.

An outage at the largest inland U.S. refinery has raised gasoline prices in the Midwest ahead of the Labor Day holiday, the final major travel weekend of the country’s peak driving season.

The ability to buy heavy crude at cheap prices is set to improve in the second half of the year as Canadian and Middle Eastern production rebounds.