Cantwell loses round on gas-price hearing

WASHINGTON — Sen. Maria Cantwell and New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer have lost an attempt to force oil executives to testify under oath today during a Senate hearing about possible gasoline-price gouging after Hurricane Katrina.

Cantwell's formal request for sworn testimony from energy-company chiefs was denied by the Republican chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee. The executives will speak but not under oath.

"Every schoolkid knows that honesty is the best policy, we should demand nothing less from witnesses before the Senate," she said in a letter to the chairmen of the two committees holding the joint hearing. Without sworn testimony, Cantwell said, she does not expect the hearing to generate much serious information for further investigations.

Spitzer agreed, saying, "It is not an affront to ask witnesses to tell the truth."

Spitzer and Cantwell, both Democrats, have recently become allies against gas-price gouging. They held a joint news conference Tuesday supporting a bill proposed by Cantwell to get the federal government to review complaints about profiteering. Cantwell said she hopes energy-industry witnesses before the Senate "will readily open their books so that we can evaluate whether supply has been manipulated."

The unusual hearing of two committees, Senate Commerce and Senate Energy and Natural Resources, was called by Senate GOP leaders soon after the late October announcement of record third-quarter profits for the oil industry. Cantwell has been leading Senate Democrats in a publicity campaign against potential "gas gouging." They have questioned whether the profits were due to energy companies taking advantage of Katrina's damage.

Public uproar followed the news of profits such as Exxon Mobil's 75 percent jump from last year. With five oil-industry bosses and two powerful committee chairmen, including Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, appearing, the hearing is likely to attract extensive media coverage. Cantwell is one of the few senators who serves on both committees.

Spitzer said he supports Cantwell's legislation because it goes beyond the current law's focus on "collusion" between oil companies.

Cantwell's bill, supported by more than two dozen Democrats but no Republicans, would empower the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to look at individual actions by corporations and gas-station franchisees. "It's clear that the FTC doesn't feel it has any other role in pushing in this area" without a new bill, she said.

She has pointed to testimony from an executive of the Automobile Association of America (AAA) of the Mid-Atlantic region before the Senate Commerce Committee in September about concerns that the oil industry was not being open about price spikes.

The AAA Mid-Atlantic said in a news release that some Exxon station owners on the East Coast complained they had been forced to raise prices by their wholesalers well above the prices at some nearby stations.

New York has prosecuted some price-gouging cases. Spitzer cited a state law his office used against roofers in Buffalo who raised repair costs after a major snowstorm and against a company that sold generators at exorbitant prices after an ice storm in a northern New York town.

A spokeswoman for Energy Committee Chairman Pete Domenici, R-N.M., said he does not need the oil executives to take an oath, but she declined to give a reason.

Alicia Mundy: 202-662-7457 or amundy@seattletimes.com