RENO, Nev. — President Barack Obama announced Thursday that the Justice Department is assembling a team to “root out any cases of fraud or manipulation” in oil markets that might be contributing to $4 a gallon-plus gasoline prices.
“We are going to make sure that no one is taking advantage of the American people for their own short-term gain,” Obama said at a town-hall-style meeting at a renewable-energy plant in Reno.
The national average price for a gallon of regular gasoline was $3.84 on Thursday, about 30 cents higher than a month ago and almost a dollar higher than a year ago.
Obama, decrying such levels as yet another hardship “at a time when things were already pretty tough,” said Attorney General Eric Holder was forming the Financial Fraud Enforcement Working Group.
It will focus some of its investigation on “the role of traders and speculators,” Obama said. The group will include several Cabinet department officials, federal regulators and the National Association of Attorneys General.
In a statement in Washington, Holder promised to “be vigilant in monitoring the oil and gas markets for any wrongdoing so that consumers can be confident they are not paying higher prices as a result of illegal activity. If illegal conduct is responsible for increasing gas prices, state and federal authorities should take swift action.”
However, in a Justice Department memo accompanying his statement, Holder suggested no evidence had turned up yet of unlawful price manipulation.
There’s not much Obama can do to affect the price of gasoline in short term, something he acknowledged in his remarks. Gas prices have risen steadily as a result of tensions in the Middle East and northern Africa and rising demand from China and other emerging economies.
Given that no evidence has yet surfaced of actual fraud or price manipulation in oil markets, Obama’s remarks appeared, at least in part, as more of an attempt to assuage public anger over rising gas prices.
In an Associated Press-Gfk poll last month, 51 percent of adults said they thought recent increases in gas prices were due to “oil companies that want to boost profits” rather than changes in the global oil market. Nine percent said higher prices stemmed from a combination of both, and 37 percent said changes in the market were the cause.
Obama renewed his proposal to end roughly $4 billion annually in various government subsidies to oil and gas companies “at a time when they’re making record profits and you’re paying near record prices at the pump. It has to stop.”
Asked by a member of the audience about prospects for advancements in clean energy, Obama predicted that, with time, prices of now-expensive devices such as electric cars would come down.
“Having a flat-screen TV used to be a big deal,” Obama said. But he said now such TVs are commonplace because prices have dropped so much.
Earlier, he told supporters in San Francisco that he is pressing ahead with his agenda in a difficult political environment and that “change turned out to be a lot tougher than expected.”
Obama addressed about 200 people who paid up to $35,800 apiece for the fundraiser at San Francisco’s St. Regis Hotel, the first of four fundraisers of the day. The other three were scheduled in Los Angeles.
Obama was interrupted by a small group among the paying guests who protested the detention of Bradley Manning, an Army private accused of leaking secret documents to WikiLeaks. “We paid our dues, where’s our change?” the protesters sang to the president. “We’ll vote for you in 2012, yes that’s true. Look at the Republicans — what else can we do?”
Obama paused while security removed some of the protesters, then joked: “That’s a nice song. You guys have much better voices than I do.”
Between his California events, Obama went to the Electra Therm Co. in Reno, speaking in front of a machine that produces renewable energy from low-temperature heat waste.
