As California transitions away from fossil fuels, thousands of workers have either lost their jobs or are at risk of losing their jobs due to refinery closures. Legislation introduced in the California Assembly on Tuesday would make permanent a pilot program that provides retraining, educational grants and transition assistance to workers affected by oil and gas refinery closures.

The pilot program, the Displaced Oil and Gas Workers Fund, was created in 2022 and supports displaced workers. This original $36.5 million program is administered by the California Employment Development Department and aids those seeking to transition into new industries with comparable wages.

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Ruth Dusseault is an investigative reporter and multimedia journalist focused on environment and energy. Her position is supported by the California local news fellowship, a statewide initiative spearheaded by UC Berkeley aimed at supporting local news platforms. While a student at UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism (c’23), Ruth developed stories about the social and environmental circumstances of contaminated watersheds around the Great Lakes, Mississippi River and Florida’s Lake Okeechobee. Her thesis explored rights of nature laws in small rural communities. She is a former assistant professor and artist in residence at Georgia Tech’s School of Architecture, and uses photography, film and digital storytelling to report on the engineered systems that undergird modern life.