Suing OPEC?
Competition Law 360 reports that a Proposed Bill Would Open OPEC To Civil Suits under the US antitrust laws.
[T]he bill, penned by Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Penn.), would break away from long-held international policy by allowing civil lawsuits to be filed against the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) for alleged price fixing.
The classic law review article on this topic is Spencer Weber Waller’s “Suing Opec,” 64 U. Pitt. L. Rev. 105 (2002).
[update from David Fischer: MarketWatch has an article about the proposed legislation. According to MarketWatch:
The bill requires the Federal Trade Commission and the Justice Department to study whether future mergers need tougher scrutiny, and calls on the Government Accountability Office to examine whether the divestitures demanded by antitrust agencies in past mergers adequately preserved competition. The bill would also prevent companies from withholding oil and gas from the market in an effort to raise prices and would create a joint federal-state task force to probe whether information-sharing by oil companies has resulted in anticompetitive pricing. … The measure drops language included in an earlier “discussion draft” of the legislation that would have toughened language in an antitrust law that dictates criteria for weighing the impact of proposed mergers on competition. … In a section entitled the “No Oil Producing and Exporting Cartels,” the bill strips foreign nations of “sovereign immunity” to prosecution under U.S. price-fixing laws and would render inapplicable the “act of state doctrine,” which bars U.S. courts from considering acts by foreign governments that occur on foreign soil.
It will be interesting to see if the proposed legislation passes the Senate and the House.]
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