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.
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Archive | Tag: record-prices
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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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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.
Press Release
Tesoro Banks On High Gas Prices In California, Touts “West Coast Premium”
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
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
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.
Blog Post
‘Drill, Baby’ Doesn’t Cut Oil Price
3-31-10 by dugan After President Obama announced Wendnesday that he’s opening large swath of U.S. coastline to oil and gas drilling, and the government announced that domestic oil supplies had risen, the price of…
Blog Post
$3.00 a Gallon Now, $4.00 When?
01-11-10 by dugan Why be obsessed with the price of gasoline? Easy. High energy prices, including prices at the pump, will slow and even reverse economic recovery. Every 10-cent a gallon increase in the…
Blog Post
Oil’s at $82; Where’s the Sheriff?
1-05-10 by dugan Supplies of oil and fuel in the U.S. are up, and so is the price of oil–it has surged to $82 dollar a barrel, pushing gasoline over $3.00 a gallon in…
Blog Post
Oil profits shouldn’t ‘recover’
10-30-09 by dugan Why is it that media reports on oil company profits only compare them to the previous quarter and the previous year? This week’s third-quarter profit reports for Exxon, Shell, Chevron and…