Posted on 05/13/2015 4:55:36 PM PDT by Republican Wildcat
Kentucky Attorney General Jack Conway has sued Marathon Petroleum, accusing the fuel company on Tuesday of unfairly keeping competitors out of the state and keeping gas prices high.
Conway filed the antitrust lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Louisville against the state’s largest supplier of gasoline and reformulated gasoline, which must be sold in Louisville and Covington during summer months to curb pollution from emissions.
Louisville residents typically pay between 20 and 30 cents per gallon more than others throughout Kentucky, and a comparison of reformulated gasoline prices between Louisville and St. Louis revealed gasoline typically cost 25 cents more per gallon in Louisville during the summer of 2014, Conway said.
“In our lawsuit we allege that Marathon discourages competition in three specific ways,” he said during a news conference.
“Number one, it requires independent retailers to sign unlawful supply agreements that eliminate wholesale competition. Secondly, Marathon Petroleum also executes trade agreements with horizontal competitors in the wholesale market that keep other suppliers from entering the Kentucky market, and third, we allege that Marathon Petroleum writes deed restrictions into sale agreements of some properties that are sold by Marathon.”
Some trade agreements require that retailers “purchase 100 percent of their RFG (reformulated gas) from Marathon” and include penalties for noncompliance, Conway said, noting his office has fielded complaints from retailers in the past nine to 10 months.
(Excerpt) Read more at mycn2.com ...
Gee, two full terms as AG and just now getting around to this supposedly super important issue in 2015 at the very end...oh, what a coincidence! He just happens to be running for governor and we're going into the general election campaign shortly. Wow, what luck for him...this couldn't have possibly been planned this way, now could it?
By the way, if this guy's name sounds familiar, he was previously the Dem candidate in two prior nationally watched races - being defeated in 2002 by Anne Northup for the 3rd district U.S. House race in Kentucky and also was who Rand Paul defeated for U.S. Senate in 2010. Unfortunately he pretty much had a cake walk for both of his AG races.
MPC is a rocket ship of a stock! Makes some large moves on occasion.
Conway is another liberal whore. A blind man could see through him. Unfortunately liberals are blind morons so they lap it up.
Just more cheap class warfare.
So did the CEO recently cross His POTUSness?
The high cost of special summer gas blends is imposed by EPA regulations. Sue them!
Gas prices here in Kentucky can swing as much as 30 cents per gallon in less than thirty miles of travel.
Pulaski County is one of the worst as there is only one wholesale supplier that I know of. The mayor of Somerset went so far as to open the City gas station to the public. That action caused the prices to ‘crash’ to equal the surrounding counties.
The ‘owner’ of the supplier went so far as to get state wide senators and representatives to offer up legislation prohibiting actions such as the Mayor did. With the consequence that now gas prices are once again 20 cents or more higher than the surrounding counties.
For example today my local Marathon Station had gas at $2.52 and Somerset had gas at $2.69.
Maybe Marathon should issue a Public Apology and then CLOSE DOWN ALL PRODUCTION AND SALES IN THE STATE.
Watch them drop this suit overnight.
Louisville Ky. is on the Indiana/Kentucky state line...you can cross a beautiful bridge and but gas in Indiana...might be an extra mile or two but....
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