ExxonMobil and BP’s refusals to deal on the North Slope are a part of a pattern of manipulating and constricting supply in order to raise prices

and increase their control of oil and gas markets.

For example, in the mid-1990s, BP sold oil from Alaska in Asia at prices lower than it could have gotten in the U.S. in order to tighten U.S. oil supplies and raise the price of oil shipped to refineries on the West Coast. This scheme was set out in an e-mail exchange between two BP employees, in which they discussed “shorting” the West Coast market to achieve West Coast “price uplift scenarios.” One of these employees called the plan a “no-brainer.” BP’s conduct resulted in high prices at the pump for gasoline across the West Coast.


Testimony of
Mr. David Boies
Chairman
Boies, Schiller and Flexner, LLP

March 14, 2006
Testimony
Before the Committee on the Judiciary, United States Senate
Statement of David Boies
Boies, Schiller & Flexner, LLP
Counsel for the Alaska Gasline Port Authority