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Wright Tours a Long Beach Oil Field as Fox Business Reports on California's Energy Costs

April 8, 2026 · U.S. Department of Energy · 0:03:57

Embedded from the source channel — never re-uploaded. Watch on YouTube

What happened

Fox Business reported from the Alamitos oil field in Long Beach, California, during Energy Secretary Chris Wright’s visit, in the segment the Department of Energy uploaded. The report said the field has the ability to pump some 6,000 barrels a day but is currently pumping about 100 barrels a day, as the figures were stated, and that California imports 75 percent of its oil, having become what the report called an energy island because of a lack of pipelines and the state’s special fuel blend.

The report said California lost one of its largest producers last fall when Phillips shut down a refinery a few miles north, and that Valero is set to close its Northern California refinery this month, with the two refineries together accounting for 17 percent of the state’s gasoline, as the report stated the figures. It said Wright asked employees at the field how California’s energy policies had affected them and their families, and that if the field cannot pump at fuller capacity, more than half its workers will lose their jobs, as the workers were reported to have said.

The report also carried the response from the governor’s office, which dismissed Wright in critical terms, and the program’s hosts argued that California’s highest-in-the-nation gas taxes and restricted supply leave its fuel about $2 a gallon more expensive, as the hosts stated the comparison. The report quoted Occidental’s chief executive as having told Wright that regulations prevented the company from developing resources Californians needed, as the segment recounted it.

Why it matters

The segment uses one underproducing field to make the administration’s California argument — abundant in-state resources idled by state policy while refineries close and imports rise — with the governor’s office’s rebuttal carried in the same report.

Sources: U.S. Department of Energy, “Secretary Wright Joins Fox Business in California - April 8, 2026”, 2026-04-08 (official upload, embedded above; published 2026-04-08). Transcript via Supadata (private research store, paraphrased and attributed, not republished). All figures and characterizations as stated by the speakers.