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Cheaper, Cleaner Energy

To keep our society running, we need to fight for affordable electricity and gasoline. To keep our planet running, we need to aggressively pursue alternative fuels. Cheap and clean energy is essential and Consumer Watchdog keeps an eye on the power companies that too often stand in the way.

Our research has exposed price gouging by oil companies, market manipulation by energy traders and the failure of electricity deregulation. Consumer Watchdog's blog OilWatchdog is a leading oil industry critic and aggregator of smoking guns, economic analyses and alternative fuels advocacy. We also keep a close eye on the money spent for political influence by the oil industry.

Join the conversation about our energy future and the fight for cheap and clean energy.

Recent Articles:

Oil Companies Look At Permanent Refinery Cutbacks

By Ronald D. White, THE LOS ANGELES TIMES
March 10, 2010

Why Californians Are Paying Even More For Gas

By David R. Baker, THE SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE
September 24, 2009

Duvall Incident Spotlights Politicians' Perks In Capital

By Eric Bailey and Michael Rothfeld, LOS ANGELES TIMES
September 11, 2009

GOP Legislator Quits Over Taped Sex Comments

By Shane Goldmacher + Patrick McGreevy, LOS ANGELES TIMES
September 10, 2009

Mike Duvall Sex Scandal: Did He Break Lobbying Rules?

By Michael B. Farrell, THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR
September 10, 2009

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Oil Watchdog: Run From Guys With Clipboards

March 5, 2010 | Posted by Judy Dugan

Interesting that it took a New York newspaper to tell Californians that a couple of giant Texas oil refining companies are bankrolling a ballot initiative to kill the state's popular climate change/green energy law. The whole saga is much like Oklahoma oilman T. Boone Pickens' failed effort in 2008 to make California taxpayers subsidize his natural gas business. Except that Pickens was honest about paying for his own ballot initiative.

Oil Watchdog: Sympathetic Hired Guns

March 2, 2010 | dugan

While the end game on health care legislation sucks up the available news space, proposals to curb greenhouse gas emissions are being picked to shreds by power companies, coal companies, oil interests, large agribusiness and... senior citizens? Yes, the first member group that pops up on the website of Energy Citizens, an organization solely aimed at killing climate legislation, is a group called "The 60-Plus Association." It's a name that sticks in memory, because it's all over the member lists of anti-reform groups in the health care battle, sort of the anti-AARP. And I've run into them before.

Oil Watchdog: Hot Fuel Fix in Deep Freeze

February 2, 2010 | dugan

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.

Oil Watchdog: Who's Cooking Oil Prices?

February 1, 2010 | 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 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?

Oil Watchdog: $3.00 a Gallon Now, $4.00 When?

January 11, 2010 | 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. Drivers are spending $50 a month more on gasoline than they were a year ago, when prices bottomed out.No wonder the oil industry wants climate change legislation to go away.

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