Trump Wants to Let Price-Fixing Oil Execs Off the Hook

The Biden administration barred two fossil fuel executives from taking board seats at Exxon and Chevron after finding they had schemed to fix oil prices. Now Trump wants to let them off the hook — after they donated millions to the GOP this past election.

Chevron Ahead Of Earnings Figures

A Chevron gas station in Berkeley, California, on Thursday, May 1, 2025. (David Paul Morris / Bloomberg)


The Trump administration is giving executives a pass for an alleged price-fixing scheme after they contributed millions to the Republican Party this past election, including the Trump campaign and his inauguration fund.

To reward the oil and gas industry for its political loyalty, Donald Trump’s chair of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), Andrew Ferguson, took the first steps last month to lift regulatory restrictions imposed on a pair of the sector’s preeminent CEOs and Trump backers. The two were placed under consent orders by the Biden administration for colluding with foreign governments to raise oil prices.

In an op-ed this week, Ferguson made it clear that he intends to fulfill the executives’ petitions to the agency requesting this rollback, so they can rejoin the boards of their companies. “I’m asking my colleagues to undo the onerous and illegal consent decrees put in place by my FTC predecessor against oil and gas companies,” he wrote.

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