Two Nevadans, four hundred miles apart.
The first is a housekeeper at Palace Station just off the Las Vegas strip. She drives to work. Nothing else would make sense. She fills her tank once a week. Every time she does, she makes a quiet calculation about what else she is not buying that week.
The second runs a cow-calf operation outside Elko. Seven hundred heads. Thousands of acres of high desert rangeland most Nevadans have never seen, and wouldn’t know how to survive in. He runs diesel through the equipment every day. According to University of Nevada, Reno Extension research on Elko County cow-calf operations, when diesel prices spiked in recent years, a representative 700-head ranch saw its net returns collapse from $10.27 per head to $1.34 per head.
These two Nevadans have probably never met. They do not watch the same news. They don’t know each other’s names. Nothing in common, except their fuel sources.
Southern Nevada gets approximately 88% of its gasoline through the CALNEV pipeline. Northern Nevada runs on the same dependent system. That system just lost a significant piece of its capacity. The Phillips 66 Wilmington, which accounted for 8 percent of California’s refining output, closed last October. Valero’s Benicia refinery, another 9 percent, closes this April. Together, they represent 17 percent of the state’s oil capacity, with no replacement planned. California’s dependency on gas has declined.
The U.S. Energy Information Administration did not mince its assessment: “The supply shortfall left by their exit is therefore likely to have an outsized impact on the region because it cannot be easily filled by other refineries elsewhere in the country.” This just isn’t a Nevada problem. The two refineries closing will actually impact a great part of the West Coast due to its climate and topography.
AAA’s spokesperson confirmed what we already know: “We get our gas from California. So, our state kind of goes as California gas prices go.”
This is not a theoretical emergency. In February of 2023, Governor Lombardo declared a state of emergency after a leak was detected in a Long Beach pumping station on the Kinder Morgan pipeline, the same system supplying 90% of Southern Nevada’s fuel. The pipeline was restored within days, but the fragility it exposed didn’t disappear. Two years later, in January of 2025, the same pipeline shut down again when California wildfires knocked out the power infrastructure feeding it. Nevada didn’t choose either disruption. The state had no alternative when they happened.
Price projections vary. USC professor Michael Mische’s analysis puts California gasoline approaching $8.43 per gallon under difficult conditions by late 2026. UC Davis economists project a more modest added cost of $1.21 per gallon.
The housekeeper cannot absorb either number. Neither can the rancher. Caitlin Gatchalian, Nevada’s Representative at the Southwest Energy Project, bluntly told the Nevada Independent: “Low-income households and small businesses, which already spend a higher share of income on transportation, are hit first and hardest by price spikes.” In Nevada, that means gas math starts at the kitchen table long before anyone fills up their tank.
Nevada has begun to respond. In December 2025, the Nevada Homeland Security Commission formally approved a Fuel Resiliency Committee to diversify supply routes and reduce dependence on the California pipeline. They are exploring alternative connections — including HF Sinclair’s UNEV Pipeline from the Salt Lake refining network. But a committee’s reach has limits.
The pipeline agreements and infrastructure investments that will actually protect Nevada over the next decade require the Legislature to act — and Nevada’s Legislature meets for 120 days every two years.
The State Assembly and State Senate are not in session. The next opportunity does not come until 2027 — a full year after Valero closes, when prices will be set in stone and the window to act before the crisis will be closed. Neither Nevadan can wait.
The housekeeper at Palace Station and the rancher in Elko live polar-opposite lifestyles, but they are facing the same cliff.
The Fuel Resiliency Committee has until 2027 to hand the Legislature something it can act on. Whether that consists of pipeline agreements, alternative supply routes, or infrastructure, this takes longer than the 120 days the Legislature is in session. That window shuts quickly. Valero closes in April.
What the committee proposes, and how seriously Governor Lombardo treats that proposal between now and next session, will determine whether Nevada gets ahead of this. The housekeeper and rancher won’t be at that table, but will feel whatever Carson City decides.
