An Energy Agenda For a Newly Energized Congress (Part IV)

Need For Urgent Congressional Oversight of Oil/Gas Futures Trading

The consumption of fossil fuels given their impact on our environment is dangerous to our civilization, but perhaps no less so than the high price of oil. One of the reasons why prices have escalated exponentially over the past few years is the lack of government oversight and transparency in oil futures trading both domestically and overseas.

It is essential that the new Congress comes to grips with this issue. This is not a call for lower prices to encourage greater consumption. That is another issue altogether and will be dealt with separately. Rather it is a call to bring the price of oil within the parameters of real market forces and cease the transfer of hundreds of billions to corrupt and dangerous regimes.

It has been the contention here that the price of oil has been and is being manipulated to undreamed of heights by the oil industry and its allies, a complacent government, the policies of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, the panic factor of threatened supply disruptions forever hyped by the oil patch, and the constant refrain of the peak oil scaremongers who have been predicting the end of oil since the first oil well was drilled in Pennsylvania over 100 years ago.

There has been a growing appreciation that with the trading of oil and oil product futures on the commodity exchanges and the burgeoning electronic markets, a vast new terrain has opened to orchestrate the price of oil in a global and sparsely regulated arena.

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