About Francisco Leon
Francisco Leon, President and CEO of California Resources Corporation (CRC), participated in a Leadership Insight session hosted by HOPE on July 24, 2026. During the event, Leon discussed his background as an immigrant from Tijuana, Mexico, and his role as the only CEO of a U.S. oil and gas company born and raised in Mexico. He emphasized CRC's mission to "do energy better" by lowering the carbon footprint and cost of energy, and noted that nearly 40% of the company's workforce identifies as Latino. Leon stated that "we're going to need many forms of energy for a very long time" and that while an energy transition will eventually occur, "between now and then, we need to work on what we have and make it better."
Leon also addressed representation, describing the current period as "a moment of first and only's" for Latino leadership, citing examples such as the first Latina pro tem in California. He argued that "first and only's are not enough" and that the goal should be ensuring "the next generation doesn't have to be first. They just get to be." Leon serves on several boards and leadership councils, including the National Petroleum Council and the Western States Petroleum Association Board of Directors.
Source: AI-verified profile updated from Francisco Leon's recent appearances.
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Transcript (8 segments)
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Host0:00
Francisco Leon is the CEO of California Resources Corporation. Joins us now for a Power Lunch exclusive, and I think is this your first ever CNBC interview?
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Francisco Leon0:08
It is. It is. Thanks for having me.
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Host0:10
Well, I'm glad you could do it. Thank you for coming on. This is interesting. Before we get into sort of your company in general, $5.50 a gallon. I'm driving around here. I'm thinking, okay, there's a refinery going to be shut down, I think later this year. They're talking about shutting down a refinery across the bay over this way. Bonitzia, not yours. That's a Valero refinery. What's going to happen to gas prices if all these refineries keep shutting down?
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Francisco Leon0:31
Yeah, affordability is at the forefront and it makes sense. The energy is the economy. So, it is something California deals with. Let me give you some stats. California consumes about 9% of the oil in the US. We also pay about 40% higher prices than the rest of the country. That's higher than Hawaii. So, we do have a problem. The solution though is local production. The production that companies like California Resources produce in the central valley of California is the answer. It provides jobs. It provides resiliency. It lowers prices and it also has a lower carbon density. So that's the answer and that's what we're pushing forward.
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Host1:06
There was a company I don't know if you heard about them. They're called Chevron and they were based just across this body of water across the bay here on the other side what they call East Bay outside of basically San Ramon, California. They left. They're now in in Houston, Texas. They still have some people left. What's it like running an oil and gas company in California, Francisco?
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Francisco Leon1:21
Yeah, you know, some people have made the business decision to leave. We, on the other hand, doubled down. We are a California built business and we're in the intersection of providing reliable, affordable, and clean energy. It's a big market. It's 40 million Californians and the oil is still needed for many, many years. So, it's a market that we like and it's a market that we're going to be successful.
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Host1:41
There's obviously a lot of doubters. They hear oil and gas. They hear clean, they think there's no way. Now, you guys have just launched your carbon capture and storage facility. Kind of your sort of, if you know California folks, sort of out toward Bakersfield way. Realistically, how clean or environmental can we do something that most people would deem to be just an unenvironmental thing?
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Francisco Leon2:04
California can do it the cleanest in the nation and we just broke ground on the project. So we went from talking about a future of CCS to now the present. We broke ground. We're going to inject CO2 at the beginning of next year. We're going to decarbonize plants. And so here we have a cap and invest program that penalizes manufacturers and power plants for having emissions. So we're providing a market solution to fix that and we're really excited about partnering with hyperscalers. They bring data centers into the state and we expect demand to grow for power. They are looking for base load clean 24/7 power and we can help with that.
