The U.S. Federal Trade Commission is investigating whether gasoline prices were illegally increased after Hurricane Katrina and if oil companies have constrained refinery capacity to keep fuel prices high, an agency official told Congress on Wednesday.
"We are continuing our intense scrutiny of conduct in the petroleum industry in the aftermath of Katrina," John Seesel, FTC associate general counsel for energy, told the Senate Commerce Committee at a hearing on gasoline prices.
Who wants to place bets that the first FTC investigator to "find" price gouging officially will end up reassigned to checking mattress tags in Adak, Alaska? Great little political (sop) move here, but we are talking about OIL companies for pete's sake.
