Second oil company CEO conspired with OPEC to keep prices high, FTC charges

Federal regulators are alleging a major oil company CEO conspired with foreign governments to keep oil and gas prices high.

On Monday, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) filed a complaint against John B. Hess, CEO of Hess Corporation, accusing him of secretly communicating with the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC).

Hess’s company had sought a $53 billion merger with oil giant Chevron — a deal that the FTC ruled could go forward only if Hess himself was not involved with the subsequent company.

“We are very pleased that our merger with Chevron has cleared this significant regulatory hurdle,” Hess said in a statement. 

“This transaction continues to be an outstanding deal for Hess and Chevron shareholders and will create a premier integrated energy company that is ideally positioned for the energy transition.”

But while Hess will remain on as an advisor to Chevron concerning the new company’s business operations in Guyana, he will not get a seat on its board.

The FTC asserted in its complaint that his direct involvement in the new conglomerate would “heighten the risk of harm” to market competition, and would “meaningfully increase” the risk of the kind of backdoor coordination between rivals that is barred by federal antitrust law.

Hess, the FTC charged, urged OPEC officials to push publicly and privately for “inventory management,” or reduced pumping and fracking with the goal of driving up prices.

That goal cuts against the principal selling point of the shale boom for American consumers, the FTC charges. 

The record U.S. oil and gas production allowed by tools like fracking and directional drilling have undercut the “artificially low production levels and associated artificially high prices OPEC oil producers seek to set,” the agency said.

With 50 percent of global oil production under its control, OPEC has historically been able to influence or even set global prices, the FTC noted — something that would be illegal if carried out within the U.S.

As the U.S. fracking boom crashed global oil prices, “OPEC officials had an incentive to coordinate with these [U.S.] rivals rather than compete,” the agency charged.

Hess, in statements included in the filing, has praised OPEC’s price-controlling pumping. He said in a 2021 Hess earnings call that the cartel’s leadership had done a “masterful job [in] giving the market what it needs, but not oversupplying it,” and that “OPEC, I think, has done a great job managing the oil market.”

The complaint also contains redacted private communications Hess allegedly had with oil industry leaders from Saudi Arabia and the OPEC secretary.

Monday’s accusations make Hess the second major oil company CEO to be accused of illicit conspiracy with OPEC this summer.

The terms of the Chevron-Hess deal are similar to an FTC decree in May concerning Pioneer Natural Resources, another fracking-sector leader whose chief executive the agency accused of conspiring with OPEC to artificially boost prices.

In a dissenting opinion from the agency’s Monday ruling, Melissa Holyoak, a commissioner at the FTC, argued that in both the Chevron-Hess and Exxon-Pioneer cases, there was “no reason to believe the law has been violated.”

The Clayton Act, the 1914 antitrust law that the FTC says Hess violated, “means whatever the Majority needs it to mean to appease political demands,” Holyoak wrote.

“Unfortunately for Mr. Hess, the CEO of Hess Corporation, the author of every fairy tale must also fabricate a villain, and today’s action unjustifiably gave him that label.”

In a press statement, Hess Corporation representatives argued that the complaint is “without merit,” and that the company has led the industry in reinvesting its profits into drilling operations — and therefore, arguably, the oil supply.

Chevron CEO Mike Wirth also said in a statement regarding the FTC barring Hess’s direct involvement that it was “unfortunate that our Board of Directors will not get the benefit of his decades of global experience.”

As in the Chevron-Hess case, the FTC ruled that the Exxon-Pioneer merger could go through only if Pioneer’s incumbent leadership was forced out.

The FTC alleged that Pioneer’s CEO and founder, Scott Sheffield — who sought to sell his company to Exxon for $64.5 billion — had engaged in “collusive activity” that had pushed up oil prices, “leading American consumers and businesses to pay higher prices for gasoline, diesel fuel, heating oil and jet fuel.”

Sheffield has denied the allegations.

— Updated at 3:36 p.m.