By Noah Baustin, POLITICO
Environmentalists are starting to get loud about their desire for Newsom to address California’s high gasoline prices by cracking down on the oil industry.
A slew of enviro groups sent a letter (opens in new tab) to Newsom on Wednesday calling for the California Energy Commission to implement emergency regulations that would place a profit cap on oil refiners, obligate the companies to make up for supply losses during outages and keep extra inventories in storage. The organizations, including Consumer Watchdog, Asian Pacific Environmental Network and The Climate Center, argued that oil refiners are “taking advantage of the current war” to profit.
Newsom has held legislative special sessions on gas prices in previous years that gave him the power to implement all three policies. But since then, his administration has opted to signal a more favorable environment to the oil industry by delaying implementation after two refineries announced plans to idle.
On Thursday, gubernatorial candidate Tom Steyer released his own gasoline price plan (opens in new tab) to “stop big oil’s war profiteering” by implementing the profit cap. He also promised to investigate the industry for using “their monopoly power to artificially inflate prices.”
The average price of a gallon of gasoline in California is $5.93, according to AAA. — NB
