Important Facts To Know About Nopec Bill.

After twenty years of failed attempts, the “No Oil Producing and Exporting Cartels” Act, NOPEC, was passed by Senate panel on Thursday in a 17:4 vote.

Today, there are many things “influencing” the market purposefully, including releases from strategic petroleum reserves, which are explicitly designed to influence prices in a very NOPEC manner. SPR releases saw governments “colluding” to combine them for maximum effect.

This controversial law has an odd mixture of bipartisan support, but even the White House seems to be cautiously weighing the implications of the bill.

The legislation, which would have to be passed by the full Senate and the House and then be signed into law by the president, would essentially give the US the ability to sue OPEC for price conspiracy, market manipulation, etc.

A week ahead of the Senate Judiciary Committee vote on NOPEC, the committee’s top Republican and sponsor of the bill, Chuck Grassley said that he fully expected bipartisan support for the bill because of rising gasoline prices at the pump.

There are two underlying assumptions here that break with the reality of our current energy situation, however. The first assumption is that OPEC is to blame for the pain Americans are experiencing at the gas pump because its member countries are by default colluding on output quotas as well as for the inflating prices of consumer goods due to soaring diesel costs.

The obvious culprit is the Russian war on Ukraine that has provoked a Western sanctions response with the alternative being simply to let Russia annex whatever country’s territory it wants, OPEC is taking the blame for refusing to increase output quotes to bring oil prices down.

The second assumption is that OPEC is the only cartel able to influence the oil market. That assumption no longer carries much weight, particularly not since around 2018, when the US earned itself status as the world’s top oil producer by certain metrics.


The consequences could be severe for US oil producers, which is why the American Petroleum Institute (API) is dead set against it.

Retaliation, opponents feel, is a certainty that could significantly upset the free market operations of an incredibly strategic American shale.