Chuck Schumer: “I will be brief and explain the amendments. I thank my friend from Texas and others for allowing me to go ahead.…”

“I will be brief and explain the amendments. I thank my friend from Texas and others for allowing me to go ahead. Amendment No. 3723 The first amendment is a very simple one. It asks the GAO for a report that includes a review of the mergers between ExxonMobil, ChevronTexaco, ConocoPhillips, and other significant mergers in the oil industry that have occurred since 1990, to look at the impact that vitiating the mergers would have on market concentration, market power, wholesale and retail petroleum prices, and an assessment of the impact of prohibiting any one company from simultaneously owning assets in each of the oil industry sectors: exploration, refining, and distribution. To me, very simply put, one of the problems--not the only one--we have is we have allowed the oil industry to become too concentrated, letting the No. 1 and No. 2 companies merge because there was a lull in the market at a given time, and then letting No. 3 and No. 4 merge. The second largest foreign company, which I think is the sixth largest American company, all created too much concentration. I think it is one of the reasons that these days we see the price as high as it is. The prices are sticking. When the spot market goes up, the price immediately goes up; when the spot market goes down, the price takes a long time to go down.…”