With California gas consumption ballooning to meet soaring electricity-generation demand, the state's pipelines filled up quickly. Normally, other suppliers would redirect gas to places where the price was highest, and the situation would work itself out. But capacity is so limited that producers simply can't get more gas to California.
Supply and demand capitalism at work. The supply and demand were there, but the ability to allow the supply meet the demand was not. I can imagine a pincer situation occurred in company boardrooms: Raise prices to take advantage of the demand and risk government court action to penalize "price gouging", or have to face angry stockholders for failing to maximize profits.