U.S. Senator Chuck Grassley, along with a fellow Republican and two Democratic lawmakers, introduced legislation in the Senate that’s aimed at allowing the government to bring lawsuits against OPEC members for antitrust violations.
Lawmakers in the other chamber of Congress, the House of Representatives, already introduced a version of the “No Oil Producing and Exporting Cartels Act,” or NOPEC, bill in May. Congress has discussed various forms of NOPEC legislation since 2000, but both George W. Bush and Barack Obama threatened to use their veto power to halt it from becoming law. The risk for the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries is that U.S. President Donald Trump may break with this precedent.
