California lawmakers on Monday approved the nation’s first penalty for price gouging at the pump, voting to give regulators the power to punish oil companies for profiting from the type of gas price spikes that plagued the nation’s most populous state last summer.SACRAMENTO, Calif.
Instead, Newsom and lawmakers agreed to let the California Energy Commission decide whether to penalize oil companies for price gouging. But the crux of the bill isn’t a potential penalty. Instead, it’s the reams of new information oil companies would be required to disclose to state regulators about their pricing.
California’s gas prices are always higher than the rest of the country because of the state’s taxes and regulations. California has the second-highest gas tax in the country at 54 cents per gallon. And it requires a special blend of gasoline that is better for the environment but more expensive to produce.
“There’s truly no other explanation for these historically high prices other than greed,” said Assemblymember Pilar Schiavo, a Democrat from Chatsworth. “The problem is we don’t have the information that we need to prove this, and we don’t have the ability to penalize the kind of historic price gouging we saw last year.”The oil industry recorded massive profits last year, following years of huge losses during the pandemic when more people stayed home and fewer people were on the road.
It's about time! This gouging consumers for gas and heating oil needs to stop. It needs to be as much of a problem to the suppliers as it is to the consumers.
I don't see how CA fining oil companies directly helps consumers. It may indirectly but if the info that CA is demanding were made avail to the public the market could react (as in customers could choose which stations to patronize based on that. The other obvious issue is with…
This is stupid, like they won't just figure the fines into the price of their gas down the line.
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