Three oil majors may be fined for price gouging, antitrust watchdog says
Lukoil, Rosneft and Gazprom Neft can receive fines amounting to several billion rubles due to overcharging for diesel fuel by the three oil giants in late 2010 - early 2011, Federal Antimonopoly Service official said.
"Undoubtedly, it will be billions of rubles in fines again," PRIME-TASS quoted the Federal Antimonopoly Service chief Igor Artemyev as saying. The agency claimed the major oil companies are trading oil products in Russia at prices exceeding the world’s level.
FAS had earlier initiated several antitrust cases against oil companies over price collusion and claimed four companies (Rosneft, LUKOIL, Gazpromneft and TNK-BP) to pay RUB 26 bn in fines. Later, the agency and the companies entered into settlement agreement and the fine was cut down to RUB 15 billion. Igor Artemyev said the companies had paid a total of over $ 550 million in fines for oil products price gouging.