The energy investigators who nailed Enron for energy price manipulation that nearly bankrupted California just took aim at oil refining giants including Chevron and BP. May the refiners’ gasoline-price schemes now come crashing down in…
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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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“Gas Pain” At Pump and Smokestack
This California license plate, “Gas Pain,” might be the sly joke of a gastroenterologist, but it’s not on a Mercedes. So let’s stipulate that it means pain at the pump, with a gallon of regular…
BP Lies Down With Russia, Gets Up With Fleas
British oil giant BP would like us all to forget its record oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico last year, a deadly 2005 explosion at its Texas City oil refinery and a major Alaskan…
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Report on Gas Blast Sounds Too Familiar
A deadly brew of corporate carelessness and failed regulation caused the natural gas pipeline explosion that killed eight residents in a quiet neighborhood of San Bruno, CA., says a long-awaited report by the National Transportation Safety Board….
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Oil Drops 14%, Gas Only 3.4% – Fuel Prices Vary Significantly
“There’s an old saying in [the] gasoline [industry],” Judy Dugan, research director for Consumer Watchdog in Santa Monica, Calif., said Monday. “Prices go up like a rocket and down like a feather. There is a higher disconnect between the actual price of oil and the price of gasoline.” Gasoline prices have been viewed as the “last bastion of competition,” Dugan said, “but in this case that appears to have failed.” Still, gasoline prices in the state vary significantly.
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Natural Gas Drillers: ‘We Don’t Need Your Stinking Air Rules’
Whenever regulators try to clean up our air or water, industry issues its standard “job killer” press release. Let your children keep their asthma and we won’t shut down our (oil, gas, coal) (refinery, drilling…
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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.
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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.”
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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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.
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Facts of Life On High Gas Prices: It’s the Speculators & Oil Companies To Blame Not Middle East
While skirmishes in Libya and uncertainty in the Middlie East are nice cover for outrageous gasoline prices, the fact is the same old suspects are making a killing from sky-high gas prices approaching $4 dollars per gallon in California: big oil companies and greedy speculators.
Fracking Congress Finally Wakes to Natgas Danger
Congress–or at least a few Democrats in Congress–are at last investigating the explosive and toxic dangers of deep drilling for natural gas–the newest, hottest fad in the oil and gas industry. From The Hill’s energy…