Shell, Texaco Punished for Manipulations with Gas Prices

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled on Tuesday that Shell and Texaco oil companies cannot be held liable under the antitrust law for their former joint ventures that had been approved by the federal government and that set the selling price for gasoline.

The justices unanimously overturned a U.S. appeals court ruling that the antitrust law's automatic prohibition against price fixing applied to the economic arrangements under the two joint ventures set up in 1998 and discontinued in 2001.

The ruling for Shell and Texaco came from a lawsuit brought by 23,000 gas station owners in the western United States about Shell and Texaco's conspiracy to fix prices for their gasoline brands through the joint ventures.