Earlier this year, Valero Energy announced that its Benicia refinery would become a gasoline import terminal after ceasing operations in April 2026.

That was not welcome news for Benicia Mayor Steve Young.

Just weeks before the announcement, Young told Bloomberg News:

“We’re going to put up whatever resistance we can. [Making the site a fuel storage hub] is a terrible situation, because there are no jobs, there are no taxes and you have continuous emissions from tankers.”

Indeed, an economic analysis found shutting down the refinery could impact over 1,000 jobs in the region and result in nearly $11 million in annual revenue losses which may lead to major cuts to city services.

As Young told the legislature in August 2025:

“[W]e are not a big city where we can easily absorb that kind of a hit.”

Young also called converting the Valero refinery to an import terminal a “lose, lose, lose scenario” for Benicia, noting that in addition to the impact on jobs and taxes, such a plan would also delay redevelopment of the land for other purposes – potentially for decades.

While Valero has offered its Benicia employees job placement assistance and the chance to transfer to other company locations, some workers will almost certainly end up worse off after the closure.

A University of California Berkeley Labor Center report found that after the Marathon Martinez refinery idled in 2020, many workers “struggled to find jobs that would recognize their skills and compensate them comparably.” According to the analysis, a quarter of the 750 workers who were laid off were still unemployed one year later, and those who had found new jobs experienced substantial reductions in pay.

As one Phillips 66 worker described the experience after the company closed its Wilmington refinery last year:

“You have people earning between $80,000 to $200,000 a year, and almost everyone is a high school graduate and that’s it. To go out and look for another job that’s even somewhat comparable, it just doesn’t exist.”

For those Californians still holding refinery jobs, hope may be on the horizon.

At a May 2025 gubernatorial candidate forum hosted by labor unions, all seven Democrats in attendance answered yes to the following question: “As governor, would you be pragmatic to stop targeting California’s oil and gas industry in ways that jeopardize union jobs and force us to rely on dirty or imported energy?”

But as it stands now, the state would seemingly rather import more expensive gasoline from foreign suppliers who don’t employ local workers or pay local taxes than have a workable policy environment for in-state fuel production.