The Nation - News from July 7, 1985

A consumer group is asking the Justice Department to investigate whether oil companies acted together illegally last summer to prevent a collapse in oil prices. The Citizen-Labor Energy Coalition wants the department to examine the prices that major refiners posted last August for West Texas crude oil. It also wants the department to investigate simultaneous decisions by several oil companies to cut purchases from Saudi Arabia, the chief price enforcer of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries. Edwin Rothschild, the coalition’s assistant director, charged that the oil companies’ actions “resulted in prices in excess of competitive levels.”