Press Release
Santa Monica, CA — Following a Nebraska court’s ruling that the Keystone XL pipeline can be built, the nonprofit Consumer Watchdog said the issue should be moot for the Obama administration, the decision-maker, because the building of the pipeline will raise American gasoline prices – which are at historic lows.
Smoking Gun
A report released by Consumer Watchdog at the summit showed that the companies had spent more than $100 million on lobbying and campaign contributions during the last five years in California to combat environmental protections.
Press Release
Oakland, CA – The nonprofit Consumer Watchdog released a report chronicling the tactics California oil companies are likely to use to undermine implementation of climate protection laws and warned state officials they include artificially hiking the price of gasoline.
Press Release
Santa Monica, CA — Monday night’s explosion and hours-long fire at Chevron’s large oil refinery in Richmond, Ca., released toxic chemicals including sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide in unknown amounts, sending hundreds of local residents to local hospitals with breathing and eye complaints. Yet the state agency with the most expertise in regulating such toxins, the Department of Toxic Substances Control, claims it has little to no oversight of dangerous substances produced in refinery accidents, said Consumer Watchdog.
News Clipping
Activist Jamie Court, president of Consumer Watchdog in Santa Monica, calls it capitulation. “After you get bonked on the head by $4 and $5 gasoline enough times, maybe it doesn’t hurt as much,” Court said.
News Clipping
“The pain in their wallets is causing them to rethink their lifestyles,” said Jamie Court, president of Consumer Watchdog in Santa Monica, a frequent critic of Big Oil. “People tend to be a lot more environmentally conscious when just ignoring it is going to cost them something.” The changes are even more significant, Court said, given the steady rise in the number of drivers. “It shows that ultimately we can solve both the higher emission problem and the higher consumption problem associated with more drivers if we can continue to improve fuel efficiency technology,” Court said.
News Clipping
“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.
News Clipping
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.”
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.
News Clipping
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.
On KFMB-TV Channel 8 in San Diego, CA, Judy Dugan from Consumer Watchdog says rising gas prices are a form of highway robbery.
Blog Post
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.
