Transportation Fuel Market Transparency Act

Transportation Fuel Market Transparency Act

This bill expands prohibitions against manipulating fuel markets, establishes a body within the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to monitor fuel markets to ensure competitiveness, and addresses related issues.

Prohibitions against the manipulation of wholesale fuel markets or reporting false (or misleading) information shall apply to actions related to crude oil and transportation fuel, defined in this bill to include gasoline, distillate fuels, jet fuel, aviation gasoline, and biofuel. Currently, such prohibitions only apply to crude oil, gasoline, and petroleum distillates.

The bill further expands the prohibition on reporting false information to include such information that (1) concerns the supply of, operational actions related to, or output related to wholesale fuel markets; (2) is not required to be reported by law; or (3) affects the analyses or data compiled by a private sector price-reporting agency.

The bill also increases the maximum civil penalty for violating these prohibitions from $1 million to $2 million for each day of the violation.

Furthermore, the bill establishes within the FTC the Transportation Fuel Monitoring and Enforcement Unit. The unit must continuously and comprehensively collect and analyze fuel market data to support competitive market practices, identify market manipulation and other unfair methods of competition, and facilitate enforcement of competition-related statutes.

The Energy Information Administration within the Department of Energy must collect data to facilitate transparent and competitive transportation fuel markets, determine adherence to sanctions, and protect consumers.