America's Petroleum Industry Pundit Family

Since the fifties, The Lundberg Letter, started by Dan Lundberg, has provided invaluable information to oil and energy companies, oil suppliers, distributors, wholesalers, and others. An equally invaluable resource for the industry, he also established the Lundberg Survey, a bi-weekly publication sampling prices at 7000 of America's (about) 133,000 gas stations.

These newsletters especially took off in popularity during the oil crisis of the 1970s.

During his last years, Lundberg's children, son Jan and daughter Trilby, joined his energy publishing and consultancy company. This assured that The Lundberg Letter and Survey would continue past his demise.

Until his death in 1987, Dan Lundberg was a regular commentator on PBS's Nightly Business Report.

Jan Lundberg

After his father's death, Jan Lundberg exited the publishing business, leaving sister Trilby to take over The Lundberg Letter and Lundberg Survey.

Eventually Jan went against tradition and became a strong critic of the petroleum industry, his family's bread and butter. He even went to Washington D.C., thinking that he could make a difference; but was soon overwhelmed by the backroom dealings of lobbyists and politicians.

In 1990, he moved to the northern California college community and Green Party stronghold, the city of Arcata.

Arcata

The UTNE Reader recently named Arcata one of the "10 Most Enlightened Towns" in America. Here, Jan Lundberg decided to make a difference on a smaller local scale, forming the Alliance for a Paving Moratorium, a movement made up of 170 grassroots community groups, individuals, and businesses.

The Alliance for a Paving Moratorium

The APM helped de-pave one of Arcata's main streets and close another to car traffic. And they also stopped a planned road through the Mendocino National Forest in the redwoods.

While Jan Lundberg's group has been successful on a small scale, his main view is more global. He wants to bring about a stoppage of all new road-building throughout the country, causing government to redirect investment away from proliferating suburbia and urban sprawl to repairing the ailing infrastructure of our inner cities.

Many, however, consider his organization to be a fringe group, but The Alliance for a Paving Moratorium has set a precedent that inspired many more mainstream groups with similar goals throughout the country. Some have grown much larger and more effective than Lundberg's organization, to his mixed feelings.

Trilby Lundgren

While she wasn't raised to be an oil industry analyst and didn't have a Wharton business school degree, through a twist of fate Trilby Lundberg has inherited her father's mantle as the guru of gas prices and petroleum industry insider. And she has stepped into his shoes with authority.

"I'm without a mortarboard on my head. I'm self-made or lucky," she's said.

SOURCES:

"Incite", Laird Harrison, Audubon Magazine

"Trilby Lundberg", MSNBC