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Set us as preferred Sky-high earnings for oil companies and California refiners in the second quarter are renewing calls from state legislators to crack down on industry profits.Marathon Petroleum, the second-largest refiner in the state, reported $5.1 billion in profit Tuesday, more than four times the same quarter last year, after fuel supplies tightened during the Iran war and prices for oil and gas soared.
From April through June, Chevron, the biggest refiner and second-biggest oil producer in California, made $12.1 billion in profit, nearly five times the same quarter last year, and its highest earnings in at least six years.Refiners PBF Energy and Valero also reported windfalls, with the latter earning $3.7 billion, another fivefold increase from the year before.
“These profits are absolutely obscene,” said state Sen.Josh Becker (D-Menlo Park), who along with Sen.
Benjamin Allen (D-Santa Monica) has introduced a bill to give the state attorney general the power to prosecute price gouging in wartime.“There’s this notion that these companies can’t run profitably in California or whatever their excuses are, but these are obscene profits and we need to do what we can.”Chevron said its performance reflected global operations, not state or regional results, and was driven by past investments.“To meet consumer demand, in the past year we increased energy production nearly 20 percent and operated our refineries at roughly 97 percent capacity in the second quarter,” spokesperson Ross Allen said in an email.
The profits come at the expense of drivers, who in the U.S.saw gas prices jump between 30% and 50% since the war began.
In California, which consistently had the country’s highest gas prices before the war, prices are still hovering over $5.60 a gallon.The price spikes have prompted some legislators to say the state should stop requiring its cleaner-burning fuel blend established in the 1...