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WYDEN REPORT DETAILS FTC FAILURES
TO FIGHT HIGH GASOLINE PRICES
Senator calls for protection for American
consumers, families
by “new, aggressive leadership” at the Federal Trade
Commission
June 15, 2004
Washington, DC – U.S.
Senator Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) today released a report detailing the
Federal Trade Commission’s role in allowing gasoline prices
to reach historic highs across the United States. The report,
entitled “Campaign of Inaction: The Federal Trade Commission’s
Refusal to Protect Consumers from Consolidation, Cutbacks and
Manipulation in America’s Oil and Gasoline Markets,”
draws on Wyden’s years of investigating anti-consumer, anti-competitive
oil industry practices in the Pacific Northwest and makes the
case for new, aggressive leadership at the FTC. Wyden currently
has a “hold” or procedural block on the nomination
of Washington attorney Deborah Majoras to head the FTC; Majoras
has been unwilling or unable to tell Wyden how she would lead
the agency to aggressively fight high gasoline prices.
In the report, Wyden maintains
that with high gasoline prices threatening consumers and the nation’s
economic future, “the American people need their government
to be fighting for their interests and for our country’s
economic future. Instead, the FTC continues to wage a “campaign
of inaction” – that is, not just to fail to act on
consumers’ behalf, but to refuse to act – where oil
and gasoline markets are concerned.”
Wyden’s report outlines
the FTC’s inaction in three major areas that contribute
to high gasoline prices for consumers: oil company mergers, oil
refinery cutbacks, and anti-competitive practices in gasoline
markets. In each case, the report documents instances in which
the FTC could have taken action on behalf of American consumers,
but failed to do so. It also offers specific recommendations for
policy changes at the agency with regard to oil and gasoline markets.
“The FTC must make a …
strong commitment to finally stand up for the American consumers
the agency was created to serve,” the report says.
Wyden released the report this
morning at a hearing of the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural
Resources, of which he is a member. At the hearing, convened to
examine gasoline pricing issues, Wyden also sharply questioned
the Administrator of the U.S. Energy Department’s Energy
Information Administration on the negative impacts of using taxpayer
dollars to buy high-priced oil out of the private market to fill
the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, and questioned the president
of the American Petroleum Institute on price-gouging techniques
used by oil companies to boost profits.
The Wyden report follows this
release, and may also be found at http://wyden.senate.gov/leg_issues/issue/special.html
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