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

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?

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.

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.

Did you hear the one about how the Bush administration used the wrong calculations last year when it declared that it wasn't financial speculation causing the huge oil spike price?  It's one of many newsworthy punchlines of a strong new study that describes how government handed our energy markets over to corporate speculators, with economy-wrecking consequences--right up to destruction of the value of the dollar.

If a few slightly cheerful sentences from Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke can spike the price of oil to a record for the year, the economy is in serious trouble. There's no real-world reason for a barrel of oil to cost $75, and every buck of increase in oil means renewed pain for consumers at the pump and businesses...

Oil Price Spike, As Exxon And Others' Profit Skids, Shows Potential For New Economy-Killing Energy Roller Coaster, Says Consumer Watchdog. Profit reports offer more proof that oil prices are disconnected from actual petroleum.

Last fall, the Bush administration said all that business with oil hitting $147 a barrel and gasoline at over $4.00 a gallon was just supply and demand at work. Today--big oops! The Obama administration, politely calling the report's data "deeply flawed," said it will issue a revised report in September saying speculation did indeed driver the wild price roller coaster. If tough regulation comes with the report, the roller coaster will be flattened, if not dismantled. And the "supply and demand" believers will be ever more in the category of the Flat-Earth Society.