By Darren Tucker, Jason Powers and Brian Schnapp ( February 4, 2019, 12:50 PM EST) -- 2018 was a busy year for competition enforcement and litigation in the U.S. energy industry. Energy transactions continued to represent a significant focus of merger enforcement activity, while energy-related private antitrust litigation remained active, with cases focusing on allegations of market manipulation, bid-rigging, collusion in the pursuit of oil and gas leaseholds and mineral estates, and conspiracies to withhold refinery and pipeline capacity. On the other hand, consistent with overall criminal antitrust enforcement trends, there was relatively little cartel enforcement in the energy sector in 2018....