Tag Archive | "speculation"

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

Wednesday, October 13, 2010

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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.

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

Tuesday, October 12, 2010

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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.

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Oil Prices Tipping the Economy. Again.

Monday, April 5, 2010

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Oil Prices Tipping the Economy. Again.

04-5-2010 by dugan   Flash back to two years ago. Oil prices were nearing $120 a barrel and jamming up the price of food, gasoline, travel, almost everything we buy. In April 2008, energy analysts marveled, and worried, that the price of oil had doubled in only three years. Within a few months, oil prices [...]

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‘Drill, Baby’ Doesn’t Cut Oil Price

Wednesday, March 31, 2010

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‘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 oil went… UP. That’s pretty much proof positive that the price of oil is all about financial speculation, and not [...]

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Who’s Cooking Oil Prices?

Monday, February 1, 2010

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Who’s Cooking Oil Prices?

02-01-10 by dugan     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 [...]

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$3.00 a Gallon Now, $4.00 When?

Monday, January 11, 2010

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$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 price of a gallon of gas means another $1 billion  less for consumers to spend on anything else. As the [...]

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Oil’s at $82; Where’s the Sheriff?

Wednesday, January 6, 2010

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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 California. Wait, isn’t price supposed to go down as supplies rise? This kind of speculator-driven disconnection of energy prices from [...]

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This ‘carbon trading’ thingie

Wednesday, November 4, 2009

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This ‘carbon trading’ thingie

11-04-09 by dugan   Carbon trading. Oh, yawn. Too weird and complicated. MEGO. Leave me alone. But wait a minute: A new website, Carbon Watch, could change your mind about keeping up with cap and trade. It’s a joint project of the nonprofit Center for Investigative Reporting and PBS’s "Frontline," and puts the central battle [...]

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Oil profits shouldn’t ‘recover’

Friday, October 30, 2009

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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 friends showed profits down by half or more from last year’s pigs-at-the-trough delirium. Less than $5 billion for Exxon! Less [...]

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A Yogi Berra moment in oil prices

Friday, October 16, 2009

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A Yogi Berra moment in oil prices

10-16-09 by dugan   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 [...]

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Goldman Sachs’ oil-rig loophole

Thursday, September 10, 2009

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Goldman Sachs’ oil-rig loophole

09-10-09 by dugan   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 how hard, and successfully, the financial industry is lobbying against regulations [...]

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More oil, yes. Cheaper? Nope.

Thursday, September 3, 2009

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More oil, yes. Cheaper? Nope.

9-3-09 by dugan     If an oil giant finds a "giant" oil discovery, do oil prices respond with a sharp drop? Nope, because oil prices aren’t following anything except the stock market. BP trumpeted a big find in the Gulf of Mexico this week, and oil markets responded by staying about as flat as [...]

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Who’s killing the U.S. dollar?

Friday, August 28, 2009

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Who’s killing the U.S. dollar?

08-28-09 by dugan   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 [...]

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