Word: cartelizing
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Freddie Laker. He hath slain the bureaucratic cartel-breathing dragon...
...uranium-mining operation. But some Gulf letters and memorandums unearthed by investigators seem to indicate that the company was, at minimum, anxious not to be left out. One Gulf lawyer wrote a memo in June 1972 outlining the potential advantages of membership, and suggesting that if the cartel's activities ever came to light Gulf could blame everything on the Canadian government. Another Gulf officer took it on himself to pull together several scattered sets of cartel rules into a single code of conduct...
What influence the cartel may have had on American prices is hard to establish. The group's operations excluded the U.S., which maintained an import ban on foreign uranium fuel until the first of this year. The ban is now being gradually phased out. Nonetheless, many American uranium producers keyed their prices to world prices that Gulfs opponents charge were at least heavily influenced by the cartel...
According to Gulf, prices in the U.S. were driven up in large part not by the cartel but by its legal opponent, Westinghouse. To increase sales of its nuclear reactors, Westinghouse offered purchasers longterm, low-cost supplies of uranium fuel, though it did not own the uranium; for a time it scrambled to buy yellowcake wherever possible, and its purchases helped to lift the price. Gulf Chairman Jerry McAfee says sarcastically: "The company sold short some 60 million pounds of uranium and now is attempting to win court sanction for breaking its commitments. I think they are entitled...
Whatever the courts rule, the cartel's shenanigans are certain to refuel congressional demands that the nation's oil companies divest themselves of their nonpetroleum activities. At the least, the trials will give yet more ammunition to oil-industry critics who charge that some of the world's largest and most powerful corporations think they have become a law unto themselves...