24-04-02 Australia's competition authority has seized hundreds of documents and computer records from the offices of the country's biggest oil companies, staging the largest corporate raid in the watchdog's history after complaints of petrol price-fixing. The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission said that it was investigating whether Caltex, Mobil, Shell and other distributors had acted together to price competitors out of the market, and engaged in price-fixing and market sharing.

The move follows complaints from motoring organizations that oil companies in Australia have tended to raise petrol prices ahead of holiday weekends and have been slow to adjust them to reflect the falling oil price. The ACCC said that it had acted after receiving an anonymous letter in December from a whistleblower who had since come forward with further information.
"We have concluded that there may have been a contravention of the Trade Practices Act," said Allan Fels, chairman of the ACCC. "It principally applies to the section of the act which is about collusion. It would indicate there are some questions for some oil companies to answer as to possible communications between them concerning some price rises." The raids were "unprecedented in their scale and extent of co-ordination", he added.

About 90 officers were involved in the raids, which covered ten locations in Sydney, Melbourne and other parts of New South Wales and Victoria. Caltex, Mobil and Shell, Australia's biggest refiners and distributors of petrol, rejected the allegations and said they would co-operate with the inquiry.
"The allegations have come as a complete surprise," Caltex said.

The Service Station Association said that it had been complaining to the ACCC for some time about predatory practices within the oil industry. It doubted that the raids would find any evidence of collusion but said they were still welcome.
"It will provide a wake-up call for the major oil companies that their commercial behaviour is no longer acceptable, that the Australian public have had enough, the watchdog has had enough and that it just has to stop," the Association said. If the allegations are upheld, the companies could face fines of up to A$ 10 mm (£ 3.7 mm) each.