Archive | Tag: price-gouging

Press Release

Santa Monica, CA — Analysis of Tesoro’s earnings released today showed that the company made more California refining profit in the second quarter than ever in the company’s history. Based on the number of barrels the company refined in California, and the profits they made from each barrel, Consumer Watchdog calculates that the company’s second quarter California refiner profits were a record high of $668 million, crushing their prior record of $415 million in the second quarter of 2007. This number is four times higher than their average California profit since 2005 of $138 million.

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Press Release

Santa Monica, CA — California has broken all records for the biggest gap between what consumers here have paid so far versus the rest of the nation for gas at the pump, Consumer Watchdog said today. Californians paid $1.2 billion more, after tax differentials, than the rest of the nation in the month of July, a record, and $4.8 billion more for their gasoline over the last six months ending July 31st, since gas price spikes started. That amounts to $201 extra dollars paid by each California driver.

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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.

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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.”

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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.

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Press Release

Consumer Group Calls On Pension Funds to Divest From Prop 23 Backers Tesoro, Valero

Santa Monica, CA – Consumer advocates revealed an investor slide presentation by Texas-based oil company Tesoro explaining that oil refiners keep gasoline supplies especially tight on the West Coast to keep profits high through higher pump prices. The slides were included in a letter from Consumer Watchdog to California’s large public pension funds, known as CalPERS and CalSTRS, calling on the funds to divest from Tesoro and another refiner, Valero, which are the chief sponsors of Proposition 23 on the November ballot. The Investment Committee of CalPERS is meeting in Long Beach today.

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Press Release

New York, NY — A national consumer group is running a 30 second commercial on a Times Square Superscreen that challenges Koch Industries, “the largest oil company you’ve never heard of,” for its record of environmental degradation, political influence, Tea Party funding and climate change denial.

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Press Release

Top Prop 23 Funder Doesn’t Want Greentech Competition To Get in Way of Profiteering

Santa Monica, CA – A new report by Consumer Watchdog’s OilWatchdog.org project finds that Valero Energy reaped over $4.5 billion in refining profit while gouging California motorists since it bought its second California refinery in 2002. The oil refining giant, which is also the largest funder of Proposition 23, averaged 37% higher margins on each barrel of oil it refined in California than at refineries it owns elsewhere in the country, according to data published in company financial reports.

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