S4471-119

What This Bill Does

The Transportation Fuel Market Transparency Act amends the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 so market-manipulation and false-information prohibitions apply to transportation fuel rather than only gasoline or petroleum distillates. It defines transportation fuel to include gasoline, distillate fuels such as heating oil, jet fuel, aviation gasoline, and biofuels including ethanol, biomass-based diesel and distillates, and renewable blending components. It expands false-information coverage to information about supply, operational actions, output, and wholesale activity, removes language limiting the false information to data submitted to a federal department or agency, changes the intent standard to information intended to affect analyses, and raises the civil penalty cap from $1 million to $2 million.

The bill creates a Transportation Fuel Monitoring and Enforcement Unit inside the Federal Trade Commission. The unit must continuously and comprehensively collect, monitor, and analyze crude oil and transportation fuel market data to support transparent and competitive markets, identify market manipulation, false information, use of market power against consumers, and unfair methods of competition, and help enforce penalties. The unit must analyze buying and selling activity, identify anomalous trends and suspicious behavior, determine whether energy infrastructure concentration or exclusive control enables anticompetitive behavior, gather evidence of wrongdoing, obtain a data-sharing agreement with the Energy Information Administration, and seek data-sharing agreements with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, state energy offices or commissions, and other public or private sources. Data to be received can include buying and selling activity, physical and financial market positions, refinery output and inventories, imports and exports, public company announcements about pricing or output, and other information needed to monitor cross-market manipulation. FTC must issue regulations within 90 days, and such sums as necessary are authorized for fiscal years 2026 through 2031.

The bill also amends the Department of Energy Organization Act to create an EIA transportation fuel market transparency program. The EIA Administrator must survey energy companies that own, control, explore, extract, refine, process, store, transport, or distribute commercial amounts of crude oil or transportation fuel. The Administrator must exempt companies with de minimis market presence or impact. Surveys must collect national, regional, state, and company-level data on imports, exports, refining, storage, transportation, retail and commercial entry, upstream purchases and sales, off-exchange bilateral sales, sales between subsidiaries, market prices, submissions to price reporting entities, and other needed data. EIA must track and publish the country of original production of fuel when practicable, may use private price publishers and trade-processing data when reliable, minimize reporting burdens including through automated submissions, publish geographically specific machine-usable analyses, protect FOIA-exempt matters, enter a data-sharing agreement with FTC within one year without limitation or delay, and may share data with CFTC, FERC, SEC, and other federal agencies. Such sums as necessary are authorized for fiscal years 2026 through 2031.

The bill requires FTC to report within 90 days to the Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee and House Energy and Commerce Committee on FTC enforcement actions against prohibited market manipulation or false information from calendar year 2025 and the preceding five calendar years. For each year, the report must include the number of initiated and completed actions, actions resulting in a violation, average violations per action, average civil penalties, aggregate penalties collected, and actions ending with no violation. A savings clause states that nothing in the Act alters or expands FTC authority.

Who Benefits and How

Consumers of gasoline, heating oil, jet fuel, aviation gasoline, diesel, ethanol, biomass-based diesel, and other transportation fuels benefit because the bill broadens anti-manipulation rules, strengthens FTC market monitoring, increases penalties, expands EIA data collection, requires public market analyses, and improves enforcement reporting. FTC benefits from a dedicated monitoring unit, broader data access, such-sums funding, and a reportable enforcement record. EIA benefits from explicit survey authority, data-sharing authority, and funding for transportation fuel transparency. Congress, CFTC, FERC, SEC, state energy offices, state energy commissions, and the public benefit from more detailed, timely, geographically specific, machine-usable market data and enforcement information. Honest fuel-market participants benefit from stronger detection of manipulation, false information, and unfair competition.

Who Bears the Burden and How

Energy companies bear reporting and compliance burden because EIA surveys must collect detailed information on production, imports, exports, refining, storage, transportation, commercial entry, upstream sales, market prices, and price-reporting submissions. Companies that manipulate transportation fuel markets, report false information, use market power against consumers, or engage in unfair methods of competition face greater enforcement risk and a higher civil penalty cap of $2 million. FTC bears administrative burden because it must establish the monitoring unit, issue regulations within 90 days, obtain data-sharing agreements, collect and analyze market data, investigate suspicious behavior, gather evidence, enforce penalties, and submit enforcement reports. EIA bears administrative burden because it must conduct surveys, grant de minimis exemptions, automate reporting where possible, publish usable analyses, protect exempt information, and share data with FTC and other agencies. Federal taxpayers bear costs from such-sums authorizations for fiscal years 2026 through 2031.

Key Provisions

• Expands market-manipulation and false-information provisions from gasoline and petroleum distillates to transportation fuel, including gasoline, distillate fuels, jet fuel, aviation gasoline, and biofuels.
• Expands false-information coverage to supply, operational actions, output, and wholesale activity and raises the civil penalty cap from $1 million to $2 million.
• Establishes an FTC Transportation Fuel Monitoring and Enforcement Unit to collect, monitor, analyze, investigate, and enforce crude oil and transportation fuel market data and conduct.
• Requires FTC to seek data-sharing agreements with EIA, CFTC, FERC, state energy offices or commissions, and other public or private sources and to issue implementing regulations within 90 days.
• Creates EIA surveys of energy companies covering imports, exports, refining, storage, transportation, sales, prices, price-reporting submissions, origin country, and other data needed for transparent and competitive markets.
• Requires EIA to publish geographically specific, machine-usable market analyses, minimize reporting burdens, protect FOIA-exempt information, share data with FTC within one year, and optionally share data with CFTC, FERC, SEC, and other energy-policy agencies.
• Requires FTC to report to Congress on six years of enforcement actions, violations, civil penalties, penalty totals, and no-violation outcomes.
• Provides that the Act does not alter or expand FTC authority.