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119-s-4471119th CongressWALLET

Transportation Fuel Market Transparency Act

Sponsored By: Senator Cantwell, Maria [D-WA]

Introduced

Summary

This bill would strengthen federal efforts to boost transparency and enforcement in transportation fuel markets to curb misleading claims and market manipulation. It would expand what counts as transportation fuel, tighten false-information rules and penalties, create a dedicated FTC enforcement unit, and require new DOE data collection and sharing.

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  • Consumers and local officials would get more public data and analyses to help them understand supply and price drivers and spot unexplained price moves.
  • Refiners, wholesalers, traders, and biofuel producers would face clearer rules. "Transportation fuel" would explicitly include gasoline, distillate fuels like heating oil, jet fuel, aviation gasoline, and biofuels, and the bill raises civil penalties for false statements about supply or output.
  • Federal regulators would gain new tools to detect cross-market manipulation. The FTC would get a Transportation Fuel Monitoring and Enforcement Unit backed by mandatory DOE surveys and interagency data sharing. The bill authorizes funding for 2026–2031 and requires the FTC to issue a report within 90 days on recent enforcement activity.

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Bill Overview

Analyzed Economic Effects

2 provisions identified: 0 benefits, 0 costs, 2 mixed.

New federal fuel watchdog and penalties

If enacted, the bill would require the Federal Trade Commission to set up a Transportation Fuel Monitoring and Enforcement Unit. The Unit would collect and archive detailed fuel market data and must get a data-sharing deal with the Energy Information Administration. The bill would broaden the ban on false or misleading fuel market reports to cover supply, operations, output, and wholesale activity. It would raise the civil penalty cap for violations to $2,000,000. The bill would also make enforcement under Subtitle B subject to exceptions in section 814 and say nothing in the bill changes the FTC's existing legal authority.

Energy Department surveys fuel markets

If enacted, the bill would require the Energy Department to run new surveys of defined "energy companies" for detailed fuel market data. The surveys would collect imports and exports, refined, stored, transported, and final commerce volumes, upstream transactions (including off-exchange and intra-company sales), price data, and submissions to price reporters. The Department must try to exempt very small companies, minimize reporting burden (including automated submissions), and, when feasible and protected, publish machine‑readable analyses with geographic detail and country-of-origin tracking.

Sponsors & CoSponsors

Sponsor

Cantwell, Maria [D-WA]

WA • D

Cosponsors

  • Sen. Padilla, Alex [D-CA]

    CA • D

    Sponsored 4/30/2026

  • Sen. Wyden, Ron [D-OR]

    OR • D

    Sponsored 4/30/2026

Roll Call Votes

No roll call votes available for this bill.

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