This information appears to destroy the outrageous Republican election platform that Republicans are the champions of the poor and downtrodden in relation to oil and gas. While the rule change cited by this WaPo article was initiated by the Daddy Bush in 1991, Bill Clinton allowed this deregulation to stand per his DLC philosophy that anything goes business-wise and to hell with the effects on regular Americans.
This information is pretty damning but I'm sure some free market concern trolls will poo poo this:
A Few Speculators Dominate Vast Market for Oil Trading
For most of the past century, regulators put limits on financial actors to prevent them from dominating commodity exchanges, which were much smaller than the bond or stock markets. Only commercial operations, such as farms, airlines, manufacturers and the middlemen that handle their trading activities, were allowed to buy nearly unlimited quantities. The goal was to allow these businesses to minimize the effect of price swings.
The first major change to this regulatory framework occurred in 1991, when Goldman Sachs, through a subsidiary called J. Aron, argued that it should be granted the same exemption given to commercial traders because its business of buying commodities on behalf of investors was similar to the middlemen who broker commodity transactions for commercial firms.
The CFTC granted this request. More exemptions soon followed, including one to the Houston-based energy trader Enron.
(CFTC is the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.)
The article goes on to explain how one shady hedge fund management firm named Vitol actually held 11% of all oil market contracts last month!
Apparently, such speculators now control a staggering 80%+ of the oil market now whereas, before 1991, regulations didn't allow such manipulation of the markets by big money players.
The CFTC, which learned about the nature of Vitol's activities only after making an unusual request for data from the firm, now reports that financial firms speculating for their clients or for themselves account for about 81 percent of the oil contracts on NYMEX, a far bigger share than had previously been stated by the agency.
And the rest is history.
Again, oil speculators who never take possession of oil control a staggering 80%+ of the oil market thanks to "free market" sellouts like John McCain and his Republican Party.
So all the people who believe offshore oil drilling will lower gas prices need to also take a second look at re-regulating certain vital markets which only Democrats support and NOT Republicans. They need to realize that they are being played for fools by snake oil salesmen.
Barack Obama wants to re-regulate the oil industry. Do you?