An attempt to prosecute oil companies for colluding — because they abide by South African laws whereby the government sets the price of fuel every month — has collapsed.

“There is no admission of guilt, the respondents maintain that the conduct was not unlawful and the commission has elected not to pursue the matter further,” the Competition Tribunal said in a statement on Friday.

This ends a case forwarded by the Competition Commission in October 2013 accusing Chevron, Engen, Shell, Total, BP, Sasol and the South African Petroleum Industry Association (Sapia) of “sharing information allowing them to track one another’s sales and allocate markets in the supply of diesel”.

Under South African law, a government committee, the Central Energy Fund (CEF), sets the retail price of petrol and the wholesale price of diesel every month. Free market competition among oil companies in SA is forbidden.

This is the system that defeated Pick n Pay’s former chairman Raymond Ackerman. He had vowed he would not retire until he had ended SA’s “fuel price control board” — just as he had managed to get rid of government committees that, historically, fixed the prices of bread, milk, eggs and other commodities.

Ackerman retired as chairman in 2010, and despite the government’s claim to be pro-competition, the CEF still sets fuel prices every month.

The tribunal said on Friday that although it had abandoned its case against the oil companies, they had agreed to change the way they provide the government with the information used to set the monthly diesel price.

The tribunal’s statement said, “In terms of the settlement, the respondents undertake to only provide data to an independent third party, appointed by Sapia, who will collect and aggregate the data supplied by the respondents.”

-BDLive