3 Oil Firms Agree to Settle Price-Fix Suit : Energy: Chevron, Mobil and Shell will pay $77 million to four states, including California.
Three of the country’s biggest oil companies--Chevron Corp., Mobil Corp. and Shell Oil Co.--have agreed to pay $77 million to settle price-fixing claims filed by four states and private entities, prosecutors said Monday.
The agreement, approved by a federal court, will result in a total of 10 oil companies paying $151 million to put to rest suits that accused them of conspiring to eliminate competition and raise gasoline prices as far back as the 1960s.
Prosecutors reached earlier settlements with seven other oil companies--Exxon, Arco, Unocal, Texaco, Conoco, Amoco and Phillips, said California Deputy Atty. Gen. Tom Dove.
“This (settlement) sends a message to businesses that might be inclined to engage in the same kind of alleged anti-competitive practices . . . that there’s a big financial risk in doing that,” said John Ellis, a Washington state deputy attorney general.
Prosecutors said the companies did not admit any wrongdoing in agreeing to the settlement. The settlement was approved by U.S. District Judge A. Wallace Tashima in Los Angeles. A jury trial for the three oil companies had been scheduled to begin in two months.
“We always thought we’d win,” Chevron spokesman Michael W. Libbey said Monday. “. . . But if you lose with a jury, you lose big. Basically we were willing to pay $29 million as an insurance policy.”
Chevron and Mobil officials also said they settled the case in large part to avoid the risk of a potentially much higher judgment against them.
Chevron will pay $29.38 million. Shell, a unit of Royal Dutch Petroleum Co., will pay $21.8 million. Mobil agreed to pay $14.32 million.
The amount varied depending on the company’s market share and volume during the years of alleged price-fixing.
In a separate civil suit also settled Monday, the companies will issue $11.5 million in coupons for petroleum products to businesses answering advertisements that will be run in newspapers, including The Times, showing that they suffered from illegally high gasoline prices.
That suit was brought by Retail Clerks Union Local 648 and other unions.
The larger settlement stems from suits filed on behalf of ordinary motorists in California, Arizona, Oregon and Washington that were eventually combined into a single federal court action. That suit was dismissed by a federal district court in 1986 but it was revived by an appeals court in 1990.
The suits, which deal with accusations that stretch from the 1960s through the early ‘80s, accused the companies of unlawfully conspiring to fix the price of gasoline and other oil products and of contriving a gasoline shortage to justify raising prices.
