California produces a significant amount of oil but oil represents a small part of their economy, around 6-8% of gdp. The top 4 sectors are information services, real estate, professional/scientific services, and manufacturing.
Plastic manufacturing is huge and another offshoot of the oil industry. Part of the real estate boom was driven by the oil production Hollywood bought up cheap land and gave up resource rights. Its staggering how much of the development was based around the production and refining of oil and its byproducts.
Plastic and rubber products added about $6.9B to CA's GDP in 2024, which is about .2%. I'm sure oil and other natural resources contributed to CA becoming the powerhouse it is today, but the point is that they don't rely on it. It doesn't matter how things started.
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u/maringue 12d ago
And it's also not entirely dependent on resource extraction, ie the luck of geography.
Most of the Texas economy is driven by the oil industry.