Nopec

It's not so often that we find ourselves in accordance with Rep. John Conyers of Michigan, or, for that matter, Senator Schumer. But Mr. Conyers is the sponsor of, and Mr. Schumer a co-sponsor in the Senate of, a bill to crack the price-fixing power of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries. The bill, called the "No Oil Producing and Exporting Cartels Act of 2007" or "NOPEC," passed the House this week and is scheduled for a vote soon in the Senate, where co-sponsors also include Senator Lieberman and Republicans such as Senators Specter, Snowe, Grassley, and Coburn. The legislation would empower the attorney general of America to take action against price-fixing in the petroleum industry by foreign countries participating in OPEC, the oil cartel that meets regularly to set price and production targets.

The Wall Street Journal's James Taranto called the bill "bipartisan nonsense," but it strikes us that if we are going to have anti-trust laws on the books in America, they might as well be used against Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Venezuela, as opposed to against successful American businesses. The oil-producing countries may protest that they don't use their laws to tell America how much oil to produce, so why should America use its laws to tell foreign countries how much oil to produce. The answer is that American production levels are set primarily by private companies, while many of the OPEC members have nationalized petroleum production.

On September 26, 2003, The New York Sun printed an oped column by Michael Kinsley under the headline "Iraq Shouldn't Rejoin OPEC." He wrote, "OPEC is a conspiracy to fix prices. It is a textbook example of how to violate the Sherman Antitrust Act." In the war against Islamist terrorists, many of whom are funded with petrodollars, it can't hurt America to have another weapon at its disposal in the form of anti-trust laws. Not that many of the OPEC member countries show much respect for laws against terrorism, let alone price-fixing. But it can't hurt to put more tools at the disposal of the executive branch in prosecuting the war.