From: harelb@math.cornell.edu
Newsgroups: alt.activism
Subject: Re: _Public Citizen's_ 90/91 Annual Rep
Date: 26 Jan 93 06:13:00 GMT
Nf-ID: #R:9301250609.AA02378@poly.math.cor:1022919374:9301260610.AA13505@poly.math.cor:1928522616:000:4685
Nf-From: math.cornell.edu!harelb    Jan 25 22:13:00 1993


From: harelb@math.cornell.edu (misc.activism.progressive co-moderator)
Subject: _Public Citizen's_ 90/91 Annual Report: "Buyers Up"

_Public Citizen's_ 90/91 Annual Report: "Buyers Up"

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    "As prices doubled from $20 to $40 per barrel in late summer,
    Buyers Up testified before Congress, addressed the National
    Association of State Attorneys General, and helped to organize a
    coalition to seek solutions to price hikes crippling consumers and
    businesses alike.
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                          =================
                          B U Y E R S   U P
                          =================

Oil was a stormy topic in 1990, and Buyers Up was at the center of the
storm for much of the year.

Founded in 1984 as Public Citizen's fuel-buying consumer cooperative
project, Buyers Up has saved mid-Atlantic home heating oil users
millions of dollars by mobilizing their collective buying power. In
1990, more than 12,000 members from Philadelphia to central Virginia
saved up to $150 each on heating oil costs.

The skyrocketing price of oil in 1990, fueled by rampant speculation
in futures trading after the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, engaged Buyers
Up staff in an effort to hold down costs and to launch investigations
of oil company manipulation of the price. As prices doubled from $20
to $40 per barrel in late summer, Buyers Up testified before Congress,
addressed the National Association of State Attorneys General, and
helped to organize a coalition to seek solutions to price hikes
crippling consumers and businesses alike. Buyers Up called for
restrictions of the futures trading market, use of the Strategic
Petroleum Reserve to replace lost oil supplies, stricter anti-trust
actions by the Justice Department against oil companies, and a General
Accounting Office investigation into price fluctuations.

In battling the oil companies, Buyers Up was building on lessons from
a fight earlier in the year, provoked by sudden and unjustified price
rises for home heating oil during a cold spell in December 1989. Early
in 1990, Buyers Up testified before Congress and state governments,
criticizing the big oil firms for taking advantage of the cold
weather to reap monopoly profits and calling for steps to ensure
adequate supplies of heating oil in the future.

One of the measures Buyers Up demanded was a strengthened and more
effective U.S. Energy Information Administration, the federal agency
that acts as the government's primary source of data about oil and
energy.

Crippled by budget cuts and hampered by oil company interference, the
EIA had been reduced to a mere shadow of an agency. Buyers Up
published a report, _The EIA: A Decade Under Siege_, that contributed
to the resignation of the EIA's chief and to hopes that it would
better serve its mandate to supply information to Congress, the
executive branch, and the public.

In another area, Buyers Up once again focused on the dangers of
exposure to radon, a naturally occurring, invisible, odorless
radioactive gas found in many homes. Because radon can cause cancer,
Buyers Up worked with Congress and the Environmental Protection Agency
to better inform consumers about the that dangers of radon and how to
test one's home for the presence of the gas.  A particular focus of
Buyers Up's work was on forcing the development of strict federal
standards for makers of home radon-detection devices. Many
do-it-yourself radon test kits are inaccurate and of questionable
value, Buyers Up told Congress, and consumers ought to beware.

As 1990 drew to a close, Buyers Up called on 19 major oil companies to
donate 1 percent of their combined 1989 profits, or about 200 million,
to private, community-based energy assistance programs. Working with
other community energy groups, Buyers Up challenged the companies to
use some of the excess profits that resulted from windfall price hikes
following the Persian Gulf crisis to help needy families cope with
soaring heating-oil costs.