Excessive oil-market speculation is increasing energy prices for the second year in a row. Congress must stop this unregulated speculation before it derails America’s economic recovery. You can do your part to prevent a new energy bubble by telling Congress to stop oil speculation now.

What is causing the high price of fuel?  
Global oil demand has plummeted and supplies are at historically high levels. Despite these facts, energy prices continue to rise. The only logical explanation for this disconnect from supply and demand is the return of rampant oil market speculation.

Speculators gamble billions of dollars in the oil markets at your expense. These speculators buy oil contracts and then sell them to each other again and again. A barrel of oil may trade more than 20 times before it is ever
used – the price often going up with each trade and consumers picking up the final tab. This speculative frenzy causes severe market volatility and threatens to undermine efforts to improve the fragile economy.

Artificially high oil prices increase the cost of all energy products including gasoline, diesel fuel and heating oil. Higher prices make it harder for families to make ends meet and for businesses to plan for the future. This could not come at worse time, as our country is suffering through the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.

How do they get away with that?
Wall Street banks and other speculators have long lobbied Congress for weak regulations. Various loopholes allow increasingly sophisticated speculators to take advantage of consumers. For example, in 2000, Enron lobbied Congress to permit some commodities transactions to operate without oversight. This resulted in as many as 90 percent of all commodity trades secretly taking place with absolutely no one watching – allowing speculators to profit from oil price volatility and take advantage of American consumers.