Chevron misses deadline to report gasoline profit

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Chevron has not complied with a new California law requiring it to disclose how much money it is making from selling gasoline in the state, setting up a showdown with state regulators over data that Gov. Gavin Newsom’s administration requested in order to impose the nation’s first penalty on excessive oil profits.

The law requires oil companies to report their monthly “gross refining margin,” meaning the difference between how much refineries paid for crude oil and how much the company sold it for as gasoline.

State lawmakers and regulators believe that the data will give them a clearer picture of what has driven sharp increases in California’s gas prices, the highest in the nation.

California’s average price-per-gallon hit an all-time high last summer of $6.44 per gallon. That prompted Newsom and state lawmakers to send cash rebates to most drivers and enact a new law requiring oil companies to disclose more data about their prices. Newsom followed up with a bill in the state Legislature this year to penalize oil companies over excessive profits.

The deadline to report pricing data for January was March 2. Of the big five oil companies that provide 97 percent of the state’s gasoline, Marathon, PBF Energy, Phillips 66 and Valero met the deadline, the California Energy Commission said.

The commission gave Chevron until the end of Tuesday to comply or face fines of up to $2,000 per day.

Chevron submitted a “small fraction of the data required,” according to the commission, and objected to reporting anything else. Chevron attorney Melissa Sladden has requested the commission to begin a lengthy rule-making process to clarify which data must be reported. The data currently required “paints a false picture of actual refinery profit margins by significantly undercounting refinery costs,” she said.