There aren’t many oil analysts who still deny that speculation, and the sheer volume of speculative trades in energy commodities, drives up the price of oil and gasoline. But there’s an army of financial and…
Blog Post
Archive | Author: Judy Dugan
Blog Post
Do You Know Where Your Gas Taxes Are Going?
Here’s a kind of story that rarely gets reported without a specific combination of expert industry and legal knowledge and a nose for news: In Washington State, the government is passing along gas taxes to…
Gov. Brown, Why No Oil Tax?
The draconian budget proposed Monday by new Gov. Jerry Brown–loaded with cuts hitting the poorest and sickest Californians–could have been more than $1 billion a year less painful. All it would take is a little…
Blog Post
BP Spill Claims: Secrecy Raises New Suspicion
Every time BP or its hired claims administrator Kenneth Feinberg drip out a little information about Feinberg’s pay deal and BP’s control of the process, it raises even deeper suspicions. I guess Feinberg’s independence from BP all depends on your definition of “independent.”
Blog Post
Valero Uses Contract Workers for Easy Layoffs
We’ve been watching the refining company Valero since it spent $5 million last year attempting to kill California’s landmark global warming law. Ads for the ballot measure pounded on the idea that killing pollution controls would protect jobs. So does Valero really believe in protecting jobs? Ask the nearly 1,000 contract workers summarily dismissed from Valero’s Aruba plant (pictured) 16 months ago.
Blog Post
Will Gasoline Prices Crash the Economy? Again?
Monday’s federal report on gasoline prices is a horror story. The national average price for a gallon of regular spiked seven cents to $3.05 in a week. That’s an all-time record for this time of year–and for no good reason. Yet our federal regulators who could curb speculators are still sitting on their thumbs. I hope it’s uncomfortable.
Blog Post
Valero ‘Eve of Destruction’ Was a Big Fake
Oil refiner Valero, as it pumped $5 million into a California ballot proposition aimed at killing climate change regulation, warned that such regulation would bring an economic Armageddon of lost jobs in refineries and elsewhere,…
Blog Post
What BP’s Secrecy on Payout Deals Sacrifices
We’ve reported about what’s wrong in the secrecy around BP’s payments to Kenneth Feinberg and his law firm, which is doling out compensation for BP’s devastating oil spill in the Gulf. Monday, though, the Center for Justice and Democracy got deep into the guts of the matter.
Blog Post
BP’s Cost Chiselers Back in Action
Late last week, as the presidential oil spill commission’s co-chair and staff blamed BP’s cost-cutting and “failure of management” for the devastating spill in the Gulf of Mexico, BP managers claimed that the government estimate…
Blog Post
Jerry Brown, Can Fiji Make You a Wimp?
The wee island nation of Fiji managed Wednesday to back down a California-owned company and extract a fee of 8 US cents per liter on Fiji Water. The state of California can’t even manage to back down Big Oil and charge a few cents a gallon on oil pumped out of its public lands. Jerry Brown, are you listening?
Blog Post
Feinberg Can’t Do Public Job, Take Secret Pay
The deadline for submitting claims to the $20 billion BP oil spill compensation fund is midnight Tuesday. The wrangling over payouts will go on, perhaps for years. Yet the administrator of the fund, Kenneth Feinberg,…
Blog Post
Oil Spill Commission Abandons Common Sense
How could an expert lawyer, after scores of interviews, find no evidence that corporate cost-cutting wasn’t a factor in decisions that led to the BP well explosion? Apparently it wasn’t hard for the corporate attorney heading the federal investigation, whose own history includes representing oil and chemical companies. Yet his bosses see no conflict of interest.
Press Release
Group Calls on Obama To Remove Oil Panel’s Chief Lawyer for Conflict of Interest After Commission Refuses
Consumer Watchdog NEWS RELEASE Wednesday, Nov. 17, 2010 Contact: Judy Dugan, 213-280-0175; or Jamie Court, 310-392-0075 Washington, D.C. — Consumer Watchdog today called on President Obama to remove the general counsel to the national Oil…