In Brewer stop, Allen urges oil market probe

BREWER – U.S. Rep. Tom Allen called Friday for multiple federal agencies to look into the reasons oil prices have hit historic highs.

Standing Friday morning outside C.N. Brown’s Mobil station on Wilson Street, Allen said federal regulators need to root out the degree to which possible price fixing, market manipulation and “rampant” speculation have pushed per-gallon prices in Maine to more than $3.50 for regular gasoline, to more than $4.30 for diesel, and to just under $4 for heating oil. Each of those prices is approximately $2 higher than it was in January 2001, he said.

Allen said he sent letters Thursday to U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman, the Commodities Futures Trading Commission and the Federal Trade Commission, urging them to begin formal investigations of possible “inappropriate or criminal behavior” in the oil markets.

“All of them have some jurisdiction over the kind of speculation going on right now,” Allen said of the federal regulators.

He said he could not be sure how much price-skewing speculation exists in the oil markets but that “I know there is some.”

Allen said the oil markets aren’t regulated as those for oranges and soybeans are, and he laid the blame for the lack of such regulation directly at the feet of the Bush administration. Though elected in 2001, Bush had no formal energy policy until 2005, Allen said, when damage from Hurricanes Katrina and Rita sent prices up by 10 percent virtually overnight. When Bush did adopt a policy, it was one that encouraged drilling and exploration, not how to improve efficiency or reduce energy needs.

“The past seven years have brought hardship to anyone in Maine with a vehicle to fill up at the gas station, a furnace to feed or a livelihood dependent on affordable fuel,” he said. “We need a national energy policy that matches our common-sense Maine values of conservation and thrift.”

Allen acknowledged that global demand also is a factor in the price of oil, but said the mere existence of a federal investigation likely would help bring prices down.

“I think there will be an effect on price and we’ll all be better off,” he said.

The congressman said he has introduced one bill, co-sponsored another and supports a third that each would help rein in energy costs – the Small Business Fuel Cost Relief Act, the Close the Enron Loophole Act, and the Federal Price Gouging Prevention Act. These and similar proposals are making headway in the House, he said, but the Senate is another matter. Allen, a Democrat, is hoping to unseat Susan Collins in her Senate re-election bid.

Earlier Friday, Allen met at the Bangor Ramada Inn with members of the United Steelworkers labor union, which supports Allen’s positions in favor of the Consumer Product Safety Modernization Act and in opposition to the Colombia Free Trade Agreement, he said.