Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vt) accused speculators of using the chaos in Iraq "as a phony excuse to artificially drive up crude oil and gasoline prices." Sanders was responding to news that the price of oil rose above $115 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange, yesterday, a nine month high, despite the fact that Sanders says oil supplies are higher, and demand is lower than five years ago when prices were lower.
For example, Sanders says the price of regular gasoline was $3.67 yesterday (www.gasbuddy.com) while it was only $2.67 five years ago.
Senator Sanders published an article on his Senate website entitled, Speculators Use Iraq to Drive Up Oil and Gas Prices.
“I am getting tired of big oil companies telling us that gasoline prices are going up because of the turmoil in Iraq. The truth is that big oil will never miss an opportunity to increase the price of gas. Today, it’s Iraq. Tomorrow, it may be the weather. On and on it goes,” said Sanders, a member of the Senate energy committee. “The fact is that high gasoline prices have less to do with supply and demand and more to do with Wall Street speculators driving prices up in the energy futures market.”
Sanders said he will introduce legislation to force the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the federal agency that regulates oil markets, to use its emergency authority to eliminate excessive oil speculation. Sanders’ proposal is virtually identical to bipartisan legislation that overwhelmingly passed the House in 2008 by a vote of 402-19.
“Millions of Americans are hurting as a result of excessive speculation on the oil futures market,” Sanders said. “The time to provide the American people relief at the gas pump is now before this situation gets even worse.”
If I remember correctly, in 2008 after the House passed that bill, oil prices immediately came down, presumably in an effort by oil companies and speculators to prevent the Senate from moving the bill forward. If we can get the Republicans to join us again this time we should do it.