Oil executives say mergers not raising U.S. fuel prices

WASHINGTON – Top executives from the country’s largest oil companies rejected arguments Tuesday that size has allowed them overwhelming market power to force up gasoline and other fuel prices.

The executives, appearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee, each said that about a dozen industry mergers over the past decade have allowed U.S. companies to improve efficiency and achieve the size and scale of operation to compete with the world’s government-owned energy companies in the search for oil.

“Every time there is a merger, the prices have gone up. Is that just coincidence?” asked Sen. Patrick Leahy, the committee’s ranking Democrat from Vermont.

Rex Tillerson, chairman of ExxonMobil Corp., the world’s largest publicly traded oil company, had anticipated the question in his opening remarks.

AP