DOJ Urges States to Investigate Oil Companies Over High Gas Prices

The move follows comments made by President Donald Trump urging companies to lower their prices.

A gas station in Washington on June 16, 2026. Madalina Kilroy/The Epoch Times

The Department of Justice (DOJ) on Friday announced it is urging state attorneys general to probe whether oil companies are illegally keeping gasoline prices artificially high after a recent decline in crude oil prices following a temporary end to hostilities between the United States and Iran.

In the letter, DOJ Assistant Attorney General Stanley Woodward and Federal Trade Commission Chairman Andrew Ferguson said that “although crude oil prices are now dropping rapidly, far too much of that price cut is being withheld from Americans when they pay for gasoline.”

“High gas prices hit everyone’s pocketbooks—workers who commute to their jobs, small business owners who depend on fuel for deliveries, and families paying more for goods shipped to their neighborhood stores,” the letter states, also noting President Donald Trump’s recent Truth Social posts that called on gas stations and oil companies to lower prices.

The letter then encourages state attorneys general to initiate investigations under antitrust and consumer protection laws into companies believed to be fixing gasoline prices or colluding with competitors.

Noting the drop in oil prices, their letter adds that “recent volatility in crude oil prices does not suspend either the antitrust laws or state consumer protection laws” while companies are precluded from using “market volatility as cover for anticompetitive practices, fraud, or any other lawlessness that harms Americans.”

The letter comes days after the president announced that he directed the DOJ to investigate if oil companies were keeping gasoline prices elevated.

“The big Oil Companies are not dropping their price at the pump commensurate with the sharply lower prices they are paying for Oil,” Trump said in a June 24 post on Truth Social.

“Those prices are dropping like a rock! In other words, customers are being ‘gouged.’ I have instructed the DOJ to immediately start looking into this.”

Earlier this week, Trump said that companies may face “big problems” if prices are kept too high and that gasoline retailers “must get their prices down” quickly. He called on those retailers to “start targeting around the $2.50 a Gallon number,” while saying that some stations are price gouging.

Ships in the Strait of Hormuz, near Larak Island, Iran, on May 16, 2026. Majid Saeedi/Getty Images

In recent weeks, the national average price of a gallon of regular gasoline has been declining since peaking in May. The American Automobile Association said that as of Friday, the price averaged $3.82 per gallon, down about 1 cent from Thursday and more than 40 cents from a month ago.

Trump on Thursday also praised a gas retailer for announcing one-day price reductions at 25 gasoline stations across the Philadelphia metropolitan area on July 3, to mark the 250th anniversary of the United States’ founding, calling the company “very smart.”

The decline in gas and oil prices came after a memorandum of understanding was signed between the United States and Iran in June, which effectively serves as a temporary end to hostilities and sets a 60-day period to negotiate the memo’s provisions.

For more than three months, the Strait of Hormuz waterway had been effectively shut down, blocking around 20 percent of the world’s oil from being transported from the Persian Gulf.