ABSTRACT

The U.S. petroleum industry has been heavily regulated during much of its history. Prior to 1973, producers of crude petroleum operated under a variety of quantity constraints imposed and administered by state and federal agencies. Although price control per se was excluded as an official policy of the Interstate Oil Compact Commission, many observers such as Epple (1975) and deChazeau and Kahn (1959) have claimed that those quantity constraints that were in effect from 1947 to 1973 did, in fact, set domestic crude petroleum prices.