Energy

Energy and utility watchdog coverage — gas prices, oil-industry profits, utility rates, and clean-energy accountability.

Good-Government Groups Call for Reforms After Mercury News Investigation

December 23, 2010 · Mark Reback

Responding to Mercury News reports documenting how outside interests exert undue influence on the state Legislature, political watchdog groups this week called for California legislators to make their calendars public to reveal lobbyists' intrusive role in lawmaking.

Valero ‘Eve of Destruction’ Was a Big Fake

December 14, 2010 · Judy Dugan

<img class=" size-full wp-image-1897" alt="" class="right" src="https://consumerwatchdog.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/images_valeroprotest.png" style="width: 300px; height: 206px; " width="641" height="440" />Oil refiner Valero, as it pumped $5 million into a California ballot proposition aimed at killing climate change regulation, warned that such regulation would bring an <a href="http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=179081203504">economic Armageddon of lost jobs</a> in refineries and elsewhere, as well as unaffordable energy prices.

Jerry Brown, Can Fiji Make You Look Like a Wimp?

December 2, 2010 · Judy Dugan

The wee island nation of Fiji <a href="http://www.mercurynews.com/business/ci_16753594">managed Wednesday </a>to back down a California-owned company and extract a fee of 8 US cents per liter on Fiji Water. The state of California can't even manage to back down Big Oil and charge a few cents a gallon on oil pumped out of its public lands. Jerry Brown, are you listening?

Publishers Weekly Review of “The Progressive’s Guide Raising Hell”

November 18, 2010 · Mark Reback

Publishers Weekly Review: "The Progressive's Guide to Raising Hell: How to Win Grassroots Campaigns, Pass Ballot Box Laws, and Get the Change We Voted for" By Jamie Court, Chelsea Green, $14.95 trade paper (210p) ISBN 9781603582933

Lobbyists Pay To Educate New Legislators

November 16, 2010 · Mark Reback

SACRAMENTO, CA -- Former Assemblywoman Patty Berg knew exactly where to pass the hat to bankroll a training program for California's eight new female legislators in a state with a multibillion- dollar deficit: Capitol interest groups.

Spill Commission Defends Its Top Lawyer

November 16, 2010 · Mark Reback

The panel named by President Obama to investigate the BP Deepwater Horizon blowout on Tuesday rejected a call by a consumer activist group for the resignation of its chief counsel, Fred H. Bartlit Jr. The group, Consumer Watchdog, <a href="http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/science/oilletter111610.pdf">said that the panel should dismiss</a> Mr. Bartlit because his law firm, Bartlit Beck Herman Palenchar & Scott, once represented Halliburton, one of the companies involved in drilling the BP well.

BP cost-cutting was a culture, not a set of rules

November 9, 2010 · Judy Dugan

How can Progressives win again? Look to California

November 4, 2010 · Jamie Court

Big corporate money couldn't buy democracy in California Tuesday. Progressives didn't win every top office and key ballot measures because voters are more progressive, but because of the power of populist tactics practiced here that should spread across America.

Did Halliburton push its ‘cost-cutting’ cement?

October 29, 2010 · Judy Dugan

<h3> <img alt="Did Halliburton Push Its ââ‚¬˜Cost-Cuttingââ‚¬â„¢ Cement?" class="post-thumbnail woo-image" height="214" src="http://www.oilwatchdog.org/wp-content/themes/freshnews/thumb.php?src=wp-content/uploads/2010/10/Halliburtonspill1-300x216.png&w=300&h=214&zc=1&q=90" width="300" /></h3> <div class="entry"> Halliburton is the sloppy contractor with no license, bad B.O. and helpers off the street who use gravel to stretch the cement and pour your driveway without the rebar. Except writ large. And deadly.

Feinberg to Chamber: “It won’t work”

October 28, 2010 · Carmen Balber

As <a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-10-27/feinberg-defends-legal-system-rejecting-u-s-chamber-s-campaign.html">reported by Bloomberg</a>: <blockquote> Kenneth R. Feinberg, the attorney running BP Plc’s fund for victims of the Gulf oil spill, told the U.S. Chamber of Commerce not to use his efforts as an argument to revamp the U.S. legal system. </blockquote> Feinberg gave the keynote speech in the AIG-sponsored “Hall of Flags” yesterday at the Chamber’s Institute for Legal Reform.

Hey, Chevron. Clean up your own messes

October 28, 2010 · Judy Dugan

BP’s Long, Ugly History of Profit Over Safety

October 27, 2010 · Judy Dugan

(updated 10-27 with Frontline <a href="http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/the-spill/" mce_href="http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/the-spill/">video link</a>)