profiteering – Oil Watchdog

Press Release

Chevron Counts on Jigsaw Puzzle of Safety Regulation to Escape Oversight, Accountability, Says Consumer Watchdog

7. August 2012

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

A Lot Less Fuming At The Gas Pump This Time

By J.Hirsch , LOS ANGELES TIMES

7. April 2012

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

Oil Drops 14%, Gas Only 3.4% – Fuel Prices Vary Significantly

By Staff Writers

31. August 2011

“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

Gas Prices Keep Soaring As U.S. Fuels Other Countries’ Growth

By Michael Buettner , THE PROGRESS INDEX (PETERSBURG, VA)

11. April 2011

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

Posted by Mark Reback

10. March 2011

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.

Consumer Watchdog Says Rising Gas Prices Are Form Of Highway Robbery

Posted by Mark Reback

9. March 2011

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

Facts of Life On High Gas Prices: It’s the Speculators & Oil Companies To Blame Not Middle East

Posted by Jamie Court

8. March 2011

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.

News Clipping

Spill Commission Defends Its Top Lawyer

By J.M. Broder , THE NEW YORK TIMES GREEN BLOG

16. November 2010

The panel named by President Obama to investigate the BP Deepwater Horizon blowout on Tuesday rejected a call by a consumer activist group for the resignation of its chief counsel, Fred H. Bartlit Jr. The group, Consumer Watchdog, said that the panel should dismiss Mr. Bartlit because his law firm, Bartlit Beck Herman Palenchar & Scott, once represented Halliburton, one of the companies involved in drilling the BP well.

Blog Post

Feinberg to Chamber: “It won’t work”

Posted by Carmen Balber

27. October 2010

I had lunch in the Chamber of Commerce’s AIG-sponsored “Hall of Flags” today, where BP compensation fund administrator Kenneth Feinberg told the Chamber’s Institute for Legal Reform that the legal system is working just fine.

Press Release

Obama Should Stop BP Fund Administrator Feinberg From Giving Chamber Of Commerce Keynote Or Fire Him, Watchdog Says

CONTACT: Carmen Balber

26. October 2010

Washington, DC — Consumer Watchdog asked President Obama to force BP Fund Administrator Kenneth Feinberg to withdraw from a keynote address Wednesday at a Chamber of Commerce group dedicated to eviscerating spill victims’ legal rights, and to fire Feinberg if he refuses.

Press Release

Tesoro Banks On High Gas Prices In California, Touts “West Coast Premium”

CONTACT: Judy Dugan

18. October 2010

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.

Press Release

Consumer Watchdog Exposes Koch Industries on Times Square Superscreen For Pollution, Tea Party Funding, and Climate Change Denial Using Coke Parody

CONTACT: Jamie Court

13. October 2010

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.

Press Release

Study: Texas-Based Valero Gouging California Drivers For A Decade

CONTACT: Judy Dugan

12. October 2010

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.

Archive | Tag: profiteering