How States Can Regulate Big Oil

California is showing a way forward in an equitable energy marketplace.

Welcome to the podcast Organized Money. You can listen to today’s episode on Apple on Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.

This week, we’re continuing a recent Organized Money conversation in order to answer the question: Why is California’s gasoline so damn expensive? Famously, California has higher fuel standards than the rest of the nation, as well as higher gas taxes, but that’s only one part of a much more complex pricing picture.

Today on the show, we welcome Tai Milder, the inaugural director of a new division within the California Energy Commission that regulates oil and gas. He is also an antitrust veteran at the U.S. Department of Justice and the California Department of Justice. Tai helps us complete the picture, explaining how taxes and regulation contribute to prices, but also the outsized effects that pipelines, consolidation, refining, and franchising have on the prices consumers pay at the pump.

Listen via Apple or Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.

We also provide transcripts and video for every episode. Here is last week’s episode.

Thank you so much for listening. If there’s a monopoly you’d like us to explore this year, or if you have anything else to tell us, please let us know by leaving a comment or by responding directly to this email.