WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Senate budget committee on Thursday launched a probe of 18 domestic oil producers about any efforts to illegally coordinate with the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries on oil prices.
Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, a Democrat and the chairman of the committee, said in a statement he seeks to understand whether oil producers operating in the U.S. have coordinated with OPEC, and a wider production group called OPEC+ that includes Russia, on oil output, prices and “the relationship between the production and pricing of oil products.”
The producers that the committee is probing include Exxon Mobil (NYSE:), Chevron (NYSE:) and ConocoPhillips (NYSE:). None of those companies immediately responded to requests for comment.
