California’s senior senator today charged that California’s record gasoline prices may be the “results of an illegal short squeeze” engineered by the handful of companies that refine gas here.
Senator Dianne Feinstein (Credit: Wikimedia)
In a letter to the Federal Trade Commission, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, cited news reports that said Tesoro Corporation — whose refinery near San Pedro went down for maintenance — was taken advantage of by other gas suppliers “either through collusion or the use of market power.”
“Publicly-available data appears to confirm that market fundamentals are not to blame for rising gas prices in California,” the California democrat wrote in a letter to FTC chairman Jon Leibowitz.
Feinstein also called on the FTC to monitor energy price and production data gathered by other government agencies, to watch for “fraud, manipulation or other malicious trading practices.”
She also urged the FTC to establish a permanent gas and oil oversight market committee, similar to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s oversight of the natural gas and electricity markets.
Feinstein said “California consumers are all-too-familiar with energy price spikes which cannot be explained by market fundamentals, and which turn out years later to have been the result of malicious and manipulative trading activity.”
She reminded the FTC of past frauds, like the 2000-2001 electrical crisis, which turned out to have been caused by market manipulation by Enron and other traders.
That fraud cost the state an estimated $40 billion, caused rolling blackouts, and is cited by some historians as having cost Gov. Gray Davis his political career.
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It’s an Enron-style, rip-off created by the oil corporations – Chevron, Tesoro, BP, Shell, Occidental, Valero, and ExxonMobil. The Texas oil corporations have been gouging californians for years. Big Oil is squeezing the small, gas retailer out of business and squeezing Californians at the same time. Jerry Brown should look into this. Google the “$2.5 Trillion Oil Scam – slideshare” and google the “Global Oil Scam.” California is a victim of this scam. Purchase electric cars and solar panels. There is no shortage of oil, because there are 3.5 billion barrels of oil in the ground in California. The gasoline price should be the same as in Saudi Abrabia, about 50 cents a gallon. Changing gas blends will not lower gas prices.
This is not a “letter writing” issue. It’s a NEWS CONFERENCE issue – Ms. Feinstein has it right – we’re being hosed, but if I were “big oil” and I knew I could manipulate the price just by offering a politician or two a “gift” (perfectly legal, isn’t it?) so they’d look the other way, why shouldn’t I? More record profits for The Oil companies and more unfortunate “regular” people. The evidence is there, No doubt. The politicians will pound their chest and then open up their treasure chest and continue to look the other way. It’s a shame that we’ve gotten to this. Confidence in our gov’t has GOT to be at an all time low, and desperation at an all time high, and we’ll probably have to face at least 4 more years of it-regardless who wins. In 2012, winning an election gives you a license to steal. Prove me wrong, will ya?
The issue is Greed. We are driving less, we are conserving more, and we understand how they manipulate the market much better than in generations past. Hold the companies to the fire.