The Black Informant | African American Commentary, News and Community Building

House passes bill to sue OPEC over oil prices

By Tom Doggett

WASHINGTON (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. (more…)

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The putzes in D.C. go through this witch-hunt every time gas prices go up and find nothing. I think the funny irony with all of this is that the same folks who preach that “America should not be dependent on foreign oil” is suing a FOREIGN entity for limiting oil supplies. We have a whole ‘backyard’ full of oil and both Democrats and Republicans want to keep us dependent on their favorite whipping boy, OPEC. ANWR would not be an immediate fix, but it is one that we could have started years ago. Then there is the constant battle against adding more refineries.

Back to the article for a quick second–

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.

As of 2007, the chart below shows where our oil comes from.

And these are the OPEC member countries.

Algeria

Angola

Ecuador

Indonesia

IR Iran

Iraq

Kuwait

SP Libyan AJ

Nigeria

Qatar

Saudi Arabia

United Arab Emirates

Venezuela