California Gasoline Market
The Office of the Attorney General Launches Investigation
To Report Price Gouging use this online Complaint Form
The Attorney General is investigating possible illegal profiteering by gasoline retailers and oil companies in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, announcing he will subpoena records from refiners and probe the pricing practices of gas station owners.
The Attorney General's office has received complaints from California consumers about rising prices at gas stations following Hurricane Katrina. The Attorney General said he also will work with a task force of other state Attorneys General to examine gasoline pricing issues related to Hurricane Katrina.
"Hurricane Katrina has broken families, devastated communities and destroyed lives," the Attorney General said. "To unjustly profit from tragedy is unconscionable. I hope this investigation does not find that such greed has afflicted oil companies and gas station operators in California."
Consumers, oil company employees, gas station workers and others can use the Attorney General's special email hotline to submit information and/or documents about suspected unlawful practices.
California has been plagued by chronic spikes in gasoline prices. In 2004, pump prices jumped 50 cents from January to March and stood some 30 percent higher than the national average in the first week of March.
Analysts say the 2004 price increases have been fueled by familiar market forces - forces identified in Attorney General's Report on Gasoline Pricing in California in May 2000.
The market conditions include higher crude oil prices, tight gasoline supplies from the disruption in refinery production, more miles being driven by consumers, less robust competition from the shrinking number of oil companies in the marketplace, and replacement of MTBE with ethanol to meet federal Environmental Protection Agency requirements.
At an informational hearing in Los Angeles on March 11, the Attorney General provided an Updated Report on Gasoline Pricing in California. 
[PDF 175 kb / 21 pg]
The Attorney General has sought to the extent possible under existing laws to keep the marketplace from becoming even more concentrated and less competitive from oil company mergers and unfair business practices. Giving close scrutiny to oil company mergers, the Attorney General led a successful effort to make California the only state to secure divestment of a refinery in the $81 billion Exxon-Mobil global merger. The Attorney General also required other concessions aimed at preserving competition from the merger of Texaco-Shell and Arco-BP. The Attorney General has and will continue to investigate any unlawful conduct that arises in California's gasoline markets.
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