Sen. Charles Schumer of NY is probably the most knowledgable legislator in Washington when it comes to Big Oil issues and misdeeds. He gives a backhand to columnist Robert Samuelson in a letter in the Washington Post, demolishing Samuelson’s claim that oil company mergers haven’t been the cause of high gasoline prices. Schumer, like OilWatchdog, points admiringly to a Government Accountability Office report on the price effects of oil company mergers. Interestingly, Samuelson uses as evidence for his viewpoint a bit of testimony from the Federal Trade Commission, which is less independent of political pressure than the feisty and independent GAO.
Schumer also rightly slams Big Oil for using its profits mostly to buy back stock rather than invest in the future, and does it using the industry’s own inflated spending figure:
"The five largest oil companies reported almost $120 billion in profits last year alone but invested only $1.2 billion in renewable energy sources from 2000 to 2005, according to the American Petroleum Institute. "
The GAO report to which Schumer refers is here, and a link to a revelatory GAO chart on oil company mergers is here.