California’s Proposition 23 seeks to suspend a 2006 law intended to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. As of October 8, oil company Valero has donated more than $4 million to the effort to suspend the law.

JAMIE COURT
Court is author of the new book The Progressive’s Guide To Raising Hell: How To Win Grassroots Campaigns and president of Consumer Watchdog, which just released the report “Valero Energy and its California Profit Pipeline.” He said today: “Environmentalists have been fighting Proposition 23 on the basis that oil companies want to keep polluting in the state. The bigger truth is that oil companies want to keep price gouging the state’s motorists, and suspending the law to reduce greenhouse gas emissions is a tool to allow the refiners to continue to charge too much for gasoline and make too much profit per gallon. It’s all about dollars and cents per gallon.

“The report shows Californians have endured higher gasoline prices than the rest of the nation while Texas-based Valero has averaged 37 percent higher margins on each barrel of oil it refined in California. The result — $4.5 billion in profits for Valero.

“Valero’s high profitability in California depends on regaining and keeping high refining margins in the state, which requires weak regulation of the industry and steadily increasing gasoline consumption by California drivers. As the public hears more from Valero through its political campaigns, it is important to understand this company’s role in California’s long struggle with unbearably high fuel prices, and its history of squeezing big profits by gouging California motorists.”

For more information, contact at the Institute for Public Accuracy:
Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020; or David Zupan, (541) 484-9167