Quote from ByLoSellHi:
A subcommittee of the United States House headed by Representative Bart Stupak, Democrat of Michigan, is investigating commodities trading, and one bill before Congress proposes giving Nymexâs regulator, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, more oversight over Nymexâs rival, the Intercontinental Exchange.
Analysts say the market has gone from a small group of oil users and producers to a full-fledged investment arena in recent years, like stocks or bonds. Prices can move according to intangible factors like fear, just as they do in the equity markets, the analysts say. Investing in oil has also become a hedge against a weak dollar.
âLooking at oil supply and demand doesnât help me to understand oil pricesâ any longer, said Roger Diwan, a partner with PFC Energy, a consulting company in Washington. âI need to look at the dollar, at inflation and at credit squeezes.â
India is understandably concerned about high prices. The country imports 70 percent of its crude oil and has few strategic reserves and a deeply divided political landscape.
Buying stakes in overseas oil properties is proving much cheaper for India than purchasing crude on the open market. In some areas where India has purchased stakes in oil fields, it is pulling light crude oil â the kind that sets the benchmark oil price â out of the ground for less than $40 a barrel, Mr. Srinivasan said.
But Nymex executives dismiss Mr. Srinivasanâs suggestion of halting oil trading. âNymex is just a central point where buyers and sellers can come to exchange their wares,â Richard Schaeffer, the chairman of Nymex, said in a telephone interview. âWe donât make the prices. We make the prices known.â
Without Nymex, Mr. Schaeffer said, users could âonly imagine a group of countries getting together and saying âWhat do we charge today?ââ
Despite the risks of ever-rising oil prices, analysts say that Mr. Srinivasanâs idea is unlikely to be adopted; the oil market has become too big and too powerful. âThere is no way to put the genie back into the bottle,â Mr. Diwan said.