By Alex Ward Published 25 October 2012
The South African Competition Commission has called for six oil companies – Shell, BP, America’s Chevron, France’s Total and domestic producers Sasol and Engen – to stand before the South African Competition Tribunal for collusion.
An investigation that begun in 2009 revealed that the six companies to have kept diesel prices artificially high, using the South African Department of Energy’s maximum price guideline as their benchmark.
The Commission accused the firms of “extensive exchanges of commercially sensitive information”, such as monthly fuel sales, to enable them to “track each other’s sales and to align their strategies in the market”.