SACRAMENTO, California — The governors of Arizona and Nevada urged California Gov. Gavin Newsom in a letter Tuesday not to rush to impose new storage requirements on California oil refiners, raising concerns the requirements could raise costs in their states.
The letter from Nevada Gov. Joe Lombardo, a Republican, and Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs, a Democrat, came in response to a Newsom-backed Assembly proposal , that would give the California Energy Commission authority to require refiners to store more gas to try to prevent price spikes caused by shortages.
Newsom called a special session of the Legislature on Aug. 31 to consider the proposal after the Legislature balked at passing it in the last days of the regular session.
The letter raises the political stakes for Newsom’s bid to address gas price spikes that occurred in the last two years amid a presidential election in which California’s high gas prices could be used as a line of attack on state Democrats.
The governors of the neighboring states, which get a significant portion of their gas from California refineries, said they were concerned that “mandating refinery inventory would directly raise the cost of fuel for all of our constituencies and create further economic instability in the region.”