부산대학교 도서관

Federal price controls on US crude oil were rescinded on Jan. 27, 1981, but disputes over pricing and the entitlements programs are still being resolved. During the period of price controls, the potential for abuse of regulations existed with each transaction in the complex system. Many violations did occur. However, the reports of widespread abuse, involving overpricing resulting in huge additional costs to the consumer, are not born out by this analysis. In fact, industry was unable to benefit fully from the relaxation of controls during 1980. Apparently because of the complexity of the regulatory scheme, producers underpriced lower tier oil by $530 milion and upper tier oil by $414 million during the phaseout of controls. Thus, based on computations using volumes shown, producers failed to collect almost $1 billion to which they were entitled. This amount was passed along as a saving to refiners and ultimately to consumers of refined products.