7-21-09 by dugan Is it hot out? Well, so’s your gasoline. You’re losing a few cents a gallon each time you fill up at the pump. And no, with today’s insulated underground tanks,…
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Archive | Misdeeds
RSS feed for this sectionDocumenting industry actions that demonstrate immorality, greed, or disregard for others.
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Goldman Sachs’ oil revival
7-13-09 by dugan Investment bank Goldman Sachs is about to report an eye-popping profit increase, leaving the rest of the economy in the dust. That should remind us of Goldman’s key role in the energy-price…
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Walk the walk on speculation
Gary Gensler made news today by repeating some earlier pledges to get speculative oil markets under control. He has to act soon. If oil prices can hit $70 a barrel in this economy, they’ll shoot back up to $140 a barrel, with $4-a-gallon gasoline, at the slightest encouragement.
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Coal: Save me, kill the planet
7-7-09 by dugan The big energy bill produced by the House of Representatives is jammed with billions of dollars of concessions to the U.S. coal industry, pinned to the promise that coal-burning industries will,…
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Pickens is back for your bucks
06-30-09 by dugan I choked on my black-bean enchilada when an e-mail alert popped up about a new bill in the Senate. Oklahoma oil and natural gas billionaire T. Boone Pickens, who failed miserably last…
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Chevron’s $27-billion liability sticks. Again.
06-30-09 by dugan Chevron keeps throwing money at the lawsuit by Ecuadoran peasants whose land and water were spoiled by oil drilling’s toxic leftovers. The oil giant wants the suit to go away, or at…
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Reality check on oil prices
6-22-09 Nothing changed in the real world today–economy still shrinking, gasoline consumption near 10-year lows. But speculators who doubled the price of crude oil and sent prices at the pump shooting up got some kind…
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‘Heavy oil’ = Heavy pollution
06-17-09 by dugan Chevron’s evasions about its "upgrade" of a Northern California refinery to process dirtier, heavier oil got in well-deserved trouble with a state judge recently, thanks to unrelenting pressure from people who live…
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Price roller coaster redux
06-09-09 by dugan Oil prices hitting close to $70 a barrel today are a speculator’s paradise. Their party, of course, is being paid for by consumers at the pump and struggling businesses. Gasoline is averaging…
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Natural gas catch-22
Twist this one around in your brain. An industry demands that you prove it is contaminating your water. But the same industry also refuses to say what chemicals it’s injecting deep underground, which keeps you…
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Oil guys just make it up. Again.
06-03-09 by dugan The investigative journalists of the nonprofit ProPublica are dogged (and mostly alone these days) in following the oil industry’s push to get natural gas out of shale. How do they…
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Does Congress have the guts?
05-02-09 by dugan Oil companies have ruled in Washington for a couple of decades, paying lower federal fees than in any other developed country. There’s a shimmer of a hint that situation might change….
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Chevron vs. sick babies
06-02-09 by dugan Chevron is spending a little now to save a lot later, at the expense of California children’s health, state parks, poor people, you name it. The oil giant just threw another $250,000…