The No Oil Producing Exporting Cartels (NOPEC) Act seeks to hold OPEC member states liable for violations of U.S. antitrust legislation for what are seen as anticompetitive attempts to limit the world’s supply of petroleum.
What are the precedents for the NOPEC Act and its attempts to punish OPEC member states?
There is a long history of support from some in Congress for this type of anti-OPEC legislation. In 2000, the Oil Price Reduction Act and the International Energy Fair Pricing Act sought to force the president to reevaluate or even suspend economic and security ties to states engaged in “oil price fixing to the detriment of the U.S. economy.” The NOPEC bill currently under consideration in the Senate has been introduced in some form over 15 times since 1999. Yet despite the enthusiasm of some in Congress for these anti-OPEC measures, the legislation has faced considerable opposition from the other two branches of government and the business community. The challenges are on both legal and policy grounds.
