The financial news today is that oil prices are down below $90 a barrel from over $100, and futures market prices for gasoline are down 5% to below $3.00 a gallon. Will that translate to…
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Archive | Companies
RSS feed for this sectionMonitoring the activity of the industry’s largest companies.
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$4 Gasoline and the Price of Silver: Yeah, There’s a Connection
U.S. gas prices have hit their highest level ever for springtime, at $3.96 a gallon for regular on average. Yep, higher even than the record surge in 2008, as oil companies reap near-record profits. So…
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Chevron Witness Pay: Is It Really Hush Money?
Chevron’s army of lawyers isn’t its only weapon in staving off the demand of Ecuadoran peasants that the company clean up its toxic drilling mess in the Amazon. Chevron is also happy to use deception, secret video and dirty tricksters. The problem with tricksters, however, is that it can be hard to keep them in the fold, and they can be so darned greedy. Consider the tale of secret videotaper Diego Borja, and the “expense money”of at least $169,000 that Chevron has heaped on him since August 2009.
Is There a ‘Gashole’ in Your Tank?
The price of gasoline is up a dollar in the last year to $3.83 a gallon nationally. Good time to see a strange, funny, disturbing documentary called “Gashole” about how this happens. Who knew that Congressional hearings featuring oil company CEOS could be simultaneously hilarious and horrifiying? Or that “Reefer Madness” provides a clue to how oil companies distract us from the real issues?
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$4.00 Gas: It’s Not Just the Oil Price
Oil companies are making a fortune off of drivers with oil at $109 a barrel (which comes to $2.60 a gallon at 42 gallons per barrel). But they’re getting rich a second time refining the oil into gasoline.
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Gas Prices Keep Soaring As U.S. Fuels Other Countries’ Growth
California-based nonprofit, Consumer Watchdog, recently provided a clue to where the “missing” gasoline may have gone. Recently, Judy Dugan, a petroleum market commentator for Consumer Watchdog, noted that the shares of oil refiners jumped in price last month “on bets that Japan would soon have to import a lot more heating oil and gasoline because of refinery fires and quake/ tsunami damage.”
$4.00 Gasoline: Let’s Bet Against the Future
Monday’s jump in oil prices to more than $108 a barrel, with the price of gasoline above $3.66 a gallon for regular ($4.06 in California), triggered a flood of news stories. But the dry, just-the-facts…
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Japan Meltdown: Human Error Starts in the Boardroom
I remember days and nights spent at a rewrite desk in Washington 25 years ago, taking in and editing nearly unbelievable information from reporters in Russia and Western Europe. Where was this place, Chernobyl? Was…
Refiners Licking Their Chops Over Japan
With perhaps ten thousand lives lost and a nuclear reactor emergency growing daily in Japan, one industry is poised to reap huge profits from tragedy. The stocks of oil refiners charged upward today on bets…
Near Record High Gas Prices Not About Unrest In Middle East
Consumer Watchdog’s Jamie Court discusses why the spike in gas prices – especially in California – has nothing to do with civil unrest, and everything to do with profiteering.
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Absolute Gasoline Price Record in 2011?
The federal agency that tracks energy prices is predicting record annual gasoline prices for 2011–$3.56 per gallon on average for the full year, higher than the economy-wrecking $3.35 per gallon average price of 2008. The…
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Why California Drivers Pay More For Gasoline
The new blends cost an estimated 5 to 15 cents more to make per gallon than standard-issue, regular gas. Plus, California became dependent on a limited number of refineries, and those refineries reaped higher profit margins than similar facilities elsewhere in the United States. “It’s a stranded market, and it’s much easier to control prices in a stranded market,” said Judy Dugan, research director of the Consumer Watchdog nonprofit group.
Consumer Watchdog Says Rising Gas Prices Are Form Of Highway Robbery
On KFMB-TV Channel 8 in San Diego, CA, Judy Dugan from Consumer Watchdog says rising gas prices are a form of highway robbery.