Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and a group of Democrats are seeking a U.S. Justice Department investigation into executives at large companies and OPEC for alleged "collusion and price fixing."

“From pre-pandemic times to current day, industry collusion may have contributed to the 49% decrease in the U.S. oil production growth rate,” the senators wrote in the letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland released on Thursday.

“Pioneer’s and its co-conspirators’ collusion may have cost the average American household up to $500 per car in increased annual fuel costs – an unwelcome tax that is particularly burdensome for lower-income families. Meanwhile, Western oil majors collectively earned more than $300 billion in profits over the last two years, a surge that many market experts believe cannot be explained away by increased production costs from the pandemic or inflation," the letter also read.

The senators called on Garland and the federal government to "use every tool to prevent and prosecute collusion and price fixing that may have increased gasoline, diesel fuel, heating oil and jet fuel costs in a way that has materially harmed virtually every American household and business."