CBSNews reports that the US government is making moves to stop oil speculation. According to the report, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) is working on regulating oil speculators by setting limits on the amount of oil that they can hold and how long it can be held. Aside from that they are working to improve transparency in the process so it can be easily seen who is speculating.
According to an article by Matt Taibbi in Rolling Stone Magazine, Investment bank Goldman Sachs is largely to blame for the oil price hike due to their machinations to drive up the price. This site has long suspected that speculators and not market demand and supply were what was causing the price of oil to go up.
And what caused the huge spike in oil prices? Take a wild guess. Obviously Goldman had help — there were other players in the physical-commodities market — but the root cause had almost everything to do with the behavior of a few powerful actors determined to turn the once-solid market into a speculative casino. Goldman did it by persuading pension funds and other large institutional investors to invest in oil futures — agreeing to buy oil at a certain price on a fixed date. The push transformed oil from a physical commodity, rigidly subject to supply and demand, into something to bet on, like a stock. Between 2003 and 2008, the amount of speculative money in commodities grew from $13 billion to $317 billion, an increase of 2,300 percent. By 2008, a barrel of oil was traded 27 times, on average, before it was actually delivered and consumed.
Exxon Mobil once again reigned supreme on the top of Fortune 500’s list of the most profitable companies for 2009. Exxon Mobile which was 2007’s top earner but fell to second spot in 2008, regained its position by beating Wal-Mart Stores. Other oil refiners joining them at the top 10 are Chevron (3), ConocoPhillips(4), Valero Energy(10) and Marathon Oil(23). All five of them have also been able to improve their standing as compared to their previous position in 2008’s list.
Update: Government will review the law for revision and not move to scrap it.
The government has admitted that they lack the laws to effectively regulate the oil industry and because this they are seriously considering scrapping the almost decade old RA 8479 (or more popularly known as The Oil Deregulation Law.)
Add to this the heat received from the public due to the high price of LPG in the local market (despite the low price of oil in the world market) and the Department of Energy unable to find the true cause of the LPG shortage, had helped turn this bush fire into an inferno.
Read the rest of this entry »
I’m starting to think that Oil Speculators (commodity futures broker) were indeed the culprits in Oil’s meteoric rise. Look at the price of gas now in a recession. In a time before the credit crunch, investors had access to credit (or known as “Other People’s Money”) to help drive the price of oil up. Now with the credit crunch, financial institutions are cautious in lending out money so there is no financial fuel to boost the price of oil.
Read the rest of this entry »
The Philippine Stock Exchange (PSE) has asked San Miguel Corp (SMC) to justify why it shouldn’t be sanctioned for possible disclosure rule violations after it acquired majority stake in the major Philippine Oil refiner, Petron Corp.
SMC acquired its stake after acquiring a subsidiary of UK’s the Ashmore Group that held their shares in Petron. Ashmore acquired the 40% stake of the government late last year after paying P25.7 billion.
Read the rest of this entry »
