Interior Secretary Doug Burgum and Energy Secretary Chris Wright took their places beneath an American flag, their eyes fixed on a small valley below: an oil processing facility owned by Sable Offshore Corp., a company that has become an unlikely flashpoint in the administration’s escalating war with California.
The cabinet officials did not come merely to tour the facility. Standing before cameras and a small group of oil executives, they directed a stream of derision at Gov. Gavin Newsom, accusing him of ruining the state’s energy industry. “California is so extreme … we certainly are using here all of the federal authorities we have,” Wright said, signaling that Washington intends to bring the state to heel.
Sable operates oil platforms off California’s Central Coast, but its ambitions have been stalled by a fight with state regulators over an infamous pipeline. The firm ran to the Trump administration for help, and in swooping down to lob threats at Newsom, Burgum and Wright were signaling the lengths the president is willing to go for projects that serve two of his goals: increasing American oil production and bulldozing political rivals.
Wright made clear that Sable is likely only the beginning. During the event near Santa Barbara, he floated the idea of changing California’s refinery regulations, reshaping its pipeline system and creating a giant cache of oil within the state to deploy in case of emergency. Trump has already invoked federal emergency powers to override state environmental rules, a move that could pave the way for more aggressive federal intervention in California’s energy landscape.
Newsom’s office fired back quickly after the visit. Spokesperson Anthony Martinez highlighted how much the price of gasoline had risen nationwide in recent months and linked the spike to Trump’s attacks on Iran. “This is what incompetence looks like, and no number of taxpayer-funded trips for photo ops on oil platforms can distract from that fact,” Martinez said in a statement.
Newsom went further in an April statement, arguing that no amount of production from a small operator like Sable could offset the global supply disruptions caused by the president’s policies. “Americans are getting zero cents of relief at the pump from Sable like Chris Wright promised, because no drop in the bucket like Sable can make up for Trump’s war choking off a fifth of the world’s oil supply,” Newsom said. He added that a “lawbreaking oil company” was raking in profits while Americans paid billions more for gasoline.
The confrontation over Sable illustrates a broader shift in how the Trump administration is wielding federal power. By deploying top officials to a remote hillside in Santa Barbara, the president has turned a small oil company into a symbol of his determination to override state resistance, using energy policy as both a production goal and a political weapon against a rival state government.
