Oil refiners are manipulating California gas prices, consumer advocates say
Filling up at the pump is often painful in California, where drivers tend to pay more for gasoline than in most other states.
Filling up at the pump is often painful in California, where drivers tend to pay more for gasoline than in most other states.
The insurance protecting shale drillers against plummeting prices has become so crucial that for one company, SandRidge Energy Inc., payments from the hedges accounted for a stunning 64 percent of first-quarter revenue. Now the safety net is going away.
BP Plc will pay up to $18.7 billion in penalties to the U.S. government and five states to resolve nearly all claims from its deadly Gulf of Mexico oil spill five years ago in the largest corporate settlement in U.S. history
The California Air Resources Board has approved $373-million in grants to bolster alternative-fuel vehicles, including fleet-eligible rebates for low- and zero-emission passenger vehicles, the board announced.
Sales of hybrid and electric vehicles fell sharply in the first half of 2015, hurt by low gas prices, fewer incentives and a broader market shift away from cars.
The gigantic Greenland ice sheet, which is facing rapidly rising Arctic temperatures, is also contributing, and at least for now, appears to be throwing off much more ice than Antarctica.
Just in time for the Fourth of July weekend: Our very own John Hofmeister speaking words of wisdom about the need for the United States to wean itself off oil as its dominant transportation fuel.
“It’s incumbent upon the United States of America to become more oil independent,” Hofmeister said at a security conference in Israel in June. “Because it still relies on nearly 7 million barrels a day of imports, and in a nation that uses 18 and a half to 19 million barrels of oil per day, the loss or the risk of 7 million barrels a day of imports puts that nation at about two-thirds of independence, and that’s not enough for the world’s largest economy.
“So there remains an interdependence, until the U.S. can find independence, and it has every right and every responsibility to pursue independence. As does every other nation.”
Watch Hofmeister’s full talk at the Herzliya Conference in Tel Aviv:
Hofmeister knows of what he speaks: He was the president of Shell Oil Co., the American subsidiary of oil giant Royal Dutch Shell, from 2005 to 2008. The author of “Why We Hate the Oil Companies” now travels the world talking about the need for alternatives to oil. He’s not only on the board of directors and advisors at Fuel Freedom, he founded a nonprofit called Citizens for Affordable Energy.
U.S. crude prices closed at $56.96 a barrel Wednesday, down $2.51 or 4 percent, the biggest one-day drop since April 8. Compare that to last summer, when the price was above $100. But the market remains volatile, and Hofmeister said having oil at an affordable price long-term is necessary for national security.
“If you’re not taking care of yourself, no one else will,” Hofmeister said. “And so nations should look to their security — not just to their defense forces, but to their energy supplies — which in the United States, is why I’m almost entirely focused now on transitioning natural gas to transportation fuels, as well as biofuels, as well as electricity for transportation. Because the future of oil is simply limited. We’re not running out. It won’t disappear. But it simply won’t be available at this price for an indefinite future.”
Hofmeister expanded on another of his major themes: that natural gas, which is cheap and plentiful in the United States, could help the U.S. and other nations reduce oil consumption. Natural gas is used as a fuel in its gaseous, compressed form — as CNG and LNG — and it can also be processed into liquid alcohol fuel, ethanol or methanol.
“Over the next decade, nations like the United States, or like Israel, or like much of Europe if not the whole of Europe, that are not transitioning at least a third of their oil demand away from oil and toward natural gas will only look back in regret.”
(Photo credit: Poet Biorefining plant in Macon, Missouri. From FarmProgress.com)
U.S. crude prices fell 4 percent on Wednesday, posting their biggest daily drop since April after oil stockpiles in the United States rose for the first time in more than two months.
The group’s newest publication talks about attacking U.S. supertankers and screwing up the oil supply chain.
State officials on Wednesday formally adopted new rules governing hydraulic fracturing in California, setting in motion some of the toughest guidelines in the nation for the controversial oil extraction practice.