Insider news and analysis from America's top consumer advocates     Oil Watchdog is a project of Consumer Watchdog

When a private club that is too cozy with corporations make the rules on consumer protection, guess what happens? The National Conference on Weights and Measures met last week voted to just dump years' worth of proposals and plans to fix the "hot fuel" ripoff.  It reminded me of the old Soviet trick of removing purged bureaucrats from ceremonial photos.

The major oil companies all made less profit in 2009, but mostly because they could barely make a billion on refining and selling gasoline and diesel fuel, with demand running from down to stagnant. Yet they made plenty of billions on drilling and selling oil, which has more than doubled in price from around $30 a barrel (42 gallons) at the end of 2008 to around $75 a barrel on Monday. Yet global oil consumption was also down in 2009 from 2008, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Does this make any sense at all?

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 California. Wait, isn't price supposed to go down as supplies rise? This kind of speculator-driven disconnection of energy prices from supply and demand trashed the economy in 2008, and regulators need to act before the usual spring spike in gasoline prices. The regulatory sheriffs might make the deadline, according to a Bloomberg report:

California doesn't have much going for it lately, with a new $21 billion hole in its budget, more than 12% unemployment and a hapless state Legislature. But it provided cause for cheer today with its own climate regulation proposal. Because the underlying legislation (small PDF) is already in place the state is way ahead of Washington. It may be ahead of Washington on long-term economic health as well, just by signaling a stable future for green tech.

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 friends showed profits down by half or more from last year's pigs-at-the-trough delirium. Less than $5 billion for Exxon! Less than $4 billion for Chevron! They sound like the jobless should be giving part of their unemployment check to poor little Exxon. Let's get a grip on how much we don't want these profits to "recover" to what they were a year ago.

With oil prices going through the roof (near $82 a barrel today), the economy is deeply at risk. But oil refineries are looking like better investments, because gasoline prices will follow. A business publication in India is reporting that the largest Indian oil refiner is thinking of buying several refineries, including the bankrupt Big West refinery in Bakersfield, CA. Who cares, you ask?

Oil prices hit another record for the year today, at over $78 dollars for each 42-gallon barrel in futures markets. That's well over double the late 2008 low of 32 dollars a barrel. Here are the reasons given in various news stories: Dropping dollar, threats to Nigerian oil fields, a jump in U.S. industrial production, a drop in U.S. gasoline stocks. If that sounds like deja vu all over again, as Yogi Berra would put it, you're right. And just like last year's pricing roller coaster, it doesn't add up.

Pacific Gas and Electric Co.'s departure from the national Chamber of Commerce is a message that other big members ought to hear. The Chamber, claiming to represent all of U.S. business, denies the existence of global warming and seeks to undercut the authority of the Environmental Protection Agency. I'm unsurprised that American Petroleum Association loves the Chamber, but what the heck is the American Medical Association, whose members are scientists, doing with the Chamber troglodytes? Here are the AMA's phone numbers, and a list of other member companies that sell stuff to us.

It's hard to even keep track of the sex scandals--was that a governor or a senator? Which state? But one of the best of last year was in the even more boring Interior Department--the sex, cocaine and corruption-fest at the federal oil Royalty-In-Kind program. An investigation found that employees ran wild with the oil guys they're supposed to oversee. (Guess they did see them all over.) It won't happen again, though,...

Who knew that investment giant Goldman Sachs was in the oil business? I'm picturing top execs earning their tens-of-millions bonuses in hard hats and oil-streaked yellow overalls. The news is part of an otherwise depressing Wall Street Journal story on financial industry lobbying against regulations to cure the fever in energy markets that trashed the economy last year. But it's a Eureka! moment on loopholes.