By Timothy Gardner
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Senate Budget Committee on Thursday launched an investigation into domestic oil producers over possible efforts to illegally coordinate oil prices with the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, in the latest attempt by Democratic lawmakers to apply pressure on energy companies.
The producers the committee is investigating include: ExxonMobil (NYSE:), Chevron (NYSE:), ConocoPhillips (NYSE:), and 14 others. Those three major energy companies did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Two of the other major companies in the group, BP (NYSE:) and Shell (LON:), declined to comment.
Interest among many Democratic lawmakers in possible collusion between oil companies and manufacturing groups increased last month after the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) Natural resources pioneer (NYSE:) CEO Scott Sheffield of Exxon’s board on allegations that he tried to collude with OPEC to raise oil prices. The FTC made this move when it approved Exxon’s $60 billion purchase of Pioneer.
Sheffield has denied the FTC’s allegations.
Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, a Democrat and chairman of the Budget Committee, called for investigations into the companies.
“Based on recent events involving Pioneer Natural Resources… I am concerned about the potential for oil and gas companies to engage in covert, anti-competitive activities with OPEC+ that would raise prices, resulting in higher costs, not only for American families, but also for the U.S. government when it acquires crude oil for the Strategic Petroleum Reserve,” Whitehouse said in a statement.
OPEC+ is a production group to which OPEC and Russia belong and which has agreed to cut production. President Joe Biden’s administration is slowly replenishing the SPR after it sold 180 million barrels from its reserve in 2022 in an effort to control fuel prices following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
The American Petroleum Institute (API) industry group called Whitehouse’s research an “election year stunt.”
API spokesperson Bethany Williams said: “This is yet another election stunt to distract from misguided policies as the government continues to look to foreign producers to meet the growing demand for affordable, reliable energy.”
Biden, a Democrat, hopes to win re-election in November. Whitehouse, a Rhode Islander and a leading advocate for strong policies to curb climate change, is running for a fourth term in the U.S. Senate.
Earlier this month, a group of nine Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives asked the Justice Department to investigate allegations of antitrust behavior among U.S. oil producers and OPEC.
In May, U.S. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and 22 of his Democratic colleagues sent a similar letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland.
Whitehouse asked the companies to provide by July 12 all communications between them and members of the OPEC Secretariat and OPEC+ on oil production, crude oil prices and the relationship between production and pricing of oil products from January 2020 to the present.
OPEC did not immediately respond to a request for comment.