New Jersey’s US senators asked President George W. Bush to initiate dispute proceedings against the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries through the World Trade Organization in response to dramatically climbing retail gasoline prices.
The complaint could allege that OPEC members violated the WTO’s prohibition of export quotas, Democrats Frank R. Lautenberg and Robert Menendez indicated in a press conference at a Fort Lee, NJ, gasoline station.
“This year, you inexplicably made reform of OPEC a condition of Saudi Arabia’s accession to the WTO, despite the OPEC cartel’s harmful impact on the US market,” they said in a letter to Bush.
Lautenberg introduced a bill last year, S 752, that would require the president to initiate consultations with any OPEC member that also was in the WTO to seek their elimination of any action to limit the production or distribution of crude oil, natural gas, or any petroleum product.
Under Lautenberg’s proposal, the US trade representative would be required to begin WTO dispute proceedings if the consultations failed.
The US Federal Trade Commission also is due to report on its investigation of alleged price gouging by major oil companies in the US later this year, Lautenberg and Menendez said.
They urged Bush to “call on the FTC to use its authority to hold the big oil companies accountable for their actions against US consumers” if the FTC concludes price gouging or other unfair business practices occurred.
EIA price report
Their request came as the US Energy Information Administration reported US retail unleaded gasoline prices averaged $2.783/gal, up 10¢ from the week ended Apr. 10 and 19.5¢ from the week ended Apr. 3. Prices along the East Coast grew more quickly during the 2-week period to $2.801/gal from $2.581/gal.
Lautenberg and Menendez’s Apr. 17 protest continued pressure by Democrats in the 109th Congress for the Bush administration to respond aggressively to rising energy prices.
A day later, Sen. Charles E. Schumer of New York asked the FTC to investigate refining capacity impacts on gasoline prices (see story, p. 24). Meanwhile, Sen. Maria Cantwell of Washington and 15 other Senate Democrats wrote a letter to Bush asking him to support Cantwell’s bill, S 1735, aiming to prevent gasoline price-gouging.
Cantwell said: “The president recently acknowledged our oil addiction. If he’s serious about securing a better energy future for America, he should support a tough law that prevents profiteering in the oil and gas industry. We need to make absolutely certain Americans aren’t the victims of price-gouging when they go to the gas pump this summer.”
Sen. Barbara A. Mikulski of Maryland, who also signed the Apr. 18 letter, said, “Sky-high prices create a crisis for American families and businesses. We know people are nervous about going to the gas pump, and we know what it means to their families.”
When Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) introduced legislation Apr. 6 to make OPEC efforts to influence crude oil prices a violation of US antitrust law, four of the five cosponsors came from committee Democrats.
National energy summit
But congressional Democrats made their biggest energy move when Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi of California, and 50 others sent a letter to Bush and Vice-President Dick Cheney asking them to convene an emergency, bipartisan national energy summit to reduce US dependence on foreign oil.
“This is an issue that we can and should work together on to make America more secure, promote innovation and invest in our economy, and create new jobs.
“We believe that developing a serious, long-term strategy to curb our nation’s dangerous dependence on oil is long overdue,” the House and Senate Democrats said.
They recommended that such a summit include representatives of oil companies, automakers, alternative fuel producers, consumers, scientists, environmentalists, transportation experts, and state and local leaders. It also should be “open and transparent to the public in a free-flowing format,” they said.
Citing Bush’s oil addiction reference in his 2006 state of the union address, they said that “a growing chorus” of former national security officials from both Republican and Democratic administrations, economists, national consumer and public interest groups, and environmental organizations also have called for a serious plan to address US dependence on foreign oil.
“Securing our nation’s energy future is among the biggest economic and national security issues faced by our generation. The status quo-in which the security of the United States and the vitality of our domestic economy is left to the whims of foreign regimes and companies that may not have the best interests of our nation at heart-is simply not an option,” the 52 congressional Democrats told Bush and Cheney in their letter. ✦
