Insider news and analysis from America's top consumer advocates     Oil Watchdog is a project of Consumer Watchdog

 

Israel doesn't produce a drop of oil, but that hasn't stopped the price of crude oil and gasoline from rising sharply in the last week. (As far as speculative markets are concerned, any armed conflict in the Middle East is good enough.) According to the federal Energy Information Administration, pump prices for regular gasoline are up 7 cents nationwide for the week, to $1.684. California's pump price is up 6.4 cents a gallon for the week, and up 15 cents since Dec. 15.

Remember those crazy gyrations of crude oil prices last spring and summer? Price gyrations of nearly 10% in a day for no economically rational reason, as crude oil marched to $145 a barrel (and gasoline was $4 and up a gallon)? The turn of the year brought the Mini-Me version of the same, at lower stakes. It's a reminder that the new administration can't dawdle on regulating energy markets.

With a new administration a few weeks from office, and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in opposition, the likelihood of new offshore oil rigs popping up along the California coast may seem slim. But never underestimate the lobbying power of oil. The San Francisco Chronicle today offers a chilling overview of how much coastal area the industry covets. There's a map as well (below the jump), showing where companies would like to put their rigs--mostly within sight of land, because that's where the oil is...

The U.S. average retail gasoline price fell for the 25th straight week to a level not seen since early 2004, the Energy Department said toda, but California's gasoline prices inched higher over the last week. The increase has caused concern among groups such as Consumer Watchdog, which blamed what the Santa Monica organization called a sharp and unnecessary cutback in California refinery output.

 

The White House giveaways have been so fast and furious that they're hard to track. But here are two recent tales and a bracingly funny video that round up the oil industry's lame-duck season of loot--our stockings may be empty, but not Exxon's (and friends').

 

It's great to see a story that puts together the scathing investigative criticism of the Defense Department's torture-enabling former chief counsel, William Haynes, and Haynes' new job as chief counsel for Chevron Corp. A report today by Andrew Ross of the San Francisco Chronicle doesn't delve into Chevron's own human-rights problems, but Ross quotes Haynes' amoral defense of approving the torture of American military prisoners.

 

Gasoline prices in California are headed up, even as oil prices keep dropping. The reason? Refiners in the state are producing 14.8% less California-grade gasoline than a year ago, in a push to raise the pump price. No wonder a poll shows voter support for regulation and oversight of refiners.
 

 

Dan Neil in the LA Times reports today that he got 52 mpg city/highway in a test drive of the production model of the Ford Fusion hybrid, in comfort. Too bad this traditional hybrid didn't come out when gasoline prices were heading over $4.00 a gallon. As Neil notes, if the Fusion had been on sale in June, they'd be erecting statues of Alan Mulally in Detroit.

Do I have this right? A giant financial/insurance company, AIG, gets two taxpayer bailouts totaling $150 billion, no strings attached, which does zero to help distressed homeowners or the frozen credit markets. Then today, the White House grudgingly agrees to an auto industry bailout of barely over one-tenth what AIG got (and that it could have announced weeks ago), bristling with conditions, big sticks and union-busting pay, benefit and job cuts. The grudging comments today by President Bush make it clear that he didn't care about a few hundred thousand auto industry jobs--only the larger effect of an industry collapse on the economy.

In a letter to President-elect Obama and Energy Department designee Steven Chu, Consumer Watchdog urged the new administration to add regulation of the oil and refining industries to its efforts to stabilize the economy and shift to greener energy. The group points to a national poll showing that Americans, by a nearly two-to-one margin, strongly favor more regulation of the oil and refining industries.