Didn’t know this would be enforceable?
House passes bill to sue OPEC over oil prices
by Tom Doggett
(Reuters) The House of Representatives overwhelmingly approved legislation on Tuesday allowing the Justice Department to sue OPEC members for limiting oil supplies and working together to set crude prices, but the White House threatened to veto the measure.
The bill would subject OPEC oil producers, including Saudi Arabia, Iran and Venezuela, to the same antitrust laws that U.S. companies must follow.
The measure passed in a 324-84 vote, a big enough margin to override a presidential veto.
The legislation also creates a Justice Department task force to aggressively investigate gasoline price gouging and energy market manipulation.
“This bill guarantees that oil prices will reflect supply and demand economic rules, instead of wildly speculative and perhaps illegal activities,” said Democratic Rep. Steve Kagen of Wisconsin, who sponsored the legislation.
The lawmaker said Americans “are at the mercy” of OPEC for how much they pay for gasoline, which this week hit a record average of $3.79 a gallon.
The White House opposes the bill, saying that targeting OPEC investment in the United States as a source for damage awards “would likely spur retaliatory action against American interests in those countries and lead to a reduction in oil available to U.S. refiners.”
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What a laugh! These same people in Congress who want to sue OPEC while they won’t allow U.S. resources to be developed at all.
Flaccid. Transparent. Laughable were it not so demented and viable at election time.
Alas! Single Barrel Estates, anyone?
and no enforcement apart from maybe an embargo vs saudi oil…
These are the beginings of wars, one nation passing laws against other soverign nations and threatening to freeze assets.
In an open market the OPEC would be allowed to sell the oil at whatever price they chose and not have to be restricted to sell it for a worthless fiat currency that if invested can be frozen at any time.
Dollar hegemony peaking and only a little away from a crash.
it is the stuff of wars for sure
amazing how you can be born on a pile of oil (or other resources) with no army to defend yourself and the world of nations with armies agrees to let you sell it to them at any price you want and flaunt it as well?
must be some kind of mass genetic disposition?
@WARREN MOSLER,
“must be some kind of mass genetic disposition?”
You have the US to thank for that. And yes, it is in Americans’ DNA, culturally speaking of course. Is the US the only country in history to attain global military power status and not use that power for conquest? Perhaps so. Would any other country in the world today, upon obtaining global hyperpower, not simply take what it wanted from other countries? Russia, China, Japan, Germany, Turkey, Spain, England, France? Not if history is any guide. Any Muslim country? Please. Latin American country? Doubt it. India? Australia? Canada? Ok, I’ll give you Canada.