California’s Energy Commission says the state’s annual average gas price is on track to be the lowest in the past three years. 

California’s gas prices have come down this fall. The energy commission says the decrease is in part because of price transparency measures Governor Gavin Newsom recently signed into law. 

But energy experts, like Severin Borenstein, say it isn’t that simple. 

"It’s a little hard to know what they're attributing it to, because frankly, most of the change is clearly due to just the fall and crude oil prices since 2022," Borenstein said.

Oil refiners have been required to report certain price data to the state  for the past year and a half.

"I think to attribute anything to that transparency initiative would be at best highly premature," Borenstein said. 

This past September, lawmakers adopted a law requiring refiners to maintain minimum fuel inventories to prevent shortages that can in turn lead to price spikes. The policy hasn’t been implemented yet.

Borenstein said this could bring gas prices down eventually, but that we likely won’t know definitively for a few years.