WASHINGTON ? Sen. Chuck Grassley is urging the Senate Judiciary Committee to schedule a full committee markup of a bill that allows the federal government to take action against price fixing by OPEC, the 11-member Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries.
Grassley made his request Thursday in a letter to Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT), Chairman of the Judiciary Committee, which has jurisdiction over the proposed legislation. The bipartisan initiative titled NOPEC, or the No Oil Producing and Exporting Cartels Act, gained momentum Thursday when the Judiciary Subcommittee on Antitrust, Business Rights and Competition favorably reported the legislation to the full Committee, where Grassley serves as the third most senior member. "It's absurd that OPEC, which supplies 77 percent of the world's crude oil reserves, can engage in protected price-fixing and oil production fixing," said Grassley. "These nations are the most powerful monopoly in the world. If they were a group of international private companies rather than foreign governments, they would have been found guilty long ago."Grassley is an original co-sponsor of the bipartisan initiative introduced by Sens. Herb Kohl (D-WI) and Mike DeWine (R-OH). The proposed legislation would authorize the Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission to bring lawsuits against oil cartel members for antitrust violations. It would clarify that the "Act of State" doctrine would not prevent a court from ruling on antitrust charges brought against these foreign governments for engaging in illegal pricing, production and distribution of petroleum products.OPEC's actions are now protected by the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act, which allows prosecution of foreign governments when they are engaged in commercial activity but prohibits prosecution if those states are engaged in governmental activity. A 1979 federal district court decision said that OPEC is engaged in governmental rather than commercial activity when it fixesprices and sets crude oil production limits."Recent oil price spikes show us precisely how vulnerable Americans are to the whims of OPEC," Grassley said. "At the present time, OPEC can flaunt our anti-trust laws and hide behind the 1979 decision. This legislation would help put a stop to these activities."
