Oil Industry Merger Antitrust Enforcement Act of 2006

OIL INDUSTRY MERGER ANTITRUST ENFORCEMENT ACT OF 2006

Mr. DeWINE. Madam President, I join Senator Kohl as sponsor of the Oil Industry Merger Antitrust Enforcement Act. This bill will make it significantly more difficult for oil companies to merge, and should help put an end to the record energy prices that continue to burden America's consumers and businesses.

As we all know, these high fuel costs are affecting every family, and they show no sign of coming back down. We must continue our efforts to do something about it. As Chairman of the Subcommittee on Antitrust, Competition Policy and Consumer Rights, I have been working for years to combat the problem of higher energy prices. Along with Senator Kohl, I have championed legislation to make it clear that that the Department of Justice has the legal authority to prosecute OPEC for its price fixing of crude oil prices. As we all know, the biggest part of our gas prices is the price of crude oil, and the only way we can restore competition in the market for crude oil is to fight against OPEC's blatantly illegal and anticompetitive conspiracy to fix prices of this crucial commodity.

I have also asked the Federal Trade Commission to monitor gasoline prices to make sure that consumers are not subject to price gouging or illegal price manipulation, and in response to that request the FTC has instituted an ongoing project to monitor gasoline prices in 360 markets across the Nation, including 12 in my home State of Ohio.

Further, the Judiciary Committee has held two hearings addressing the causes of higher fuel prices in recent months, and last month I joined with Chairman Specter and Senators Kohl, Leahy, Feinstein, and Durbin, to sponsor legislation which prevents oil companies from unfairly manipulating the supply of oil in order to artificially raise prices, and also calls for investigations into how effective enforcement of oil mergers has been, whether past mergers need to be revisited, and whether the enforcement agencies need new standards for reviewing oil industry mergers. That legislation also creates a Joint Federal and State Task force to investigate information sharing in the oil industry that may lead to artificially high prices for gasoline, electricity, and heating oil. Perhaps most important, it provides a ``NOPEC'' provision like the one that Senator Kohl and I have sponsored in the past, which enables Justice to prosecute the illegal OPEC cartel.

While all these efforts are steps in the right direction, we continue to see increasing fuel costs, and one likely reason is the ongoing consolidation in the oil industry. And, as our energy needs increase and as oil gets harder and more expensive to find and produce, it seems likely that this consolidation will continue. Therefore, we need to continue our efforts to maintain competition in this industry, and by making it more difficult for oil companies to merge, this legislation provides a different and useful approach for keeping these companies independent and maintaining the competition that still exists.

Specifically, this bill changes the burden of proof in cases alleging illegal mergers, so that oil companies that want to merge must prove that their merger will not harm consumers. In addition, this bill requires the antitrust agencies to specifically consider the unique conditions of the petroleum market when evaluating these mergers, in order to assure that when reviewing proposed mergers the agencies are focusing on the potential dangers of oil industry mergers. These changes, taken together, will make sure that only pro-competitive mergers are allowed, and will help protect consumers and businesses from higher energy prices.

We still have many challenges to face in our ongoing efforts to combat high energy prices, but this bill will make a difference and I strongly encourage my colleagues to join in support of its passage.

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