Blame Oil Speculators, Not Obama, For Rising Oil Prices
By Alex Seitz-Wald
As the improving economy has robbed conservatives of their chief talking point against President Obama, they’ve turned to rising gas prices as the next problem to pin on the president.
Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) “instructed fellow Republicans to embrace the gas-pump anger,” while Rick Santorum conspiratorially claimed Obama is intentionally pushing up prices to cut carbon emissions. Not to be outdone, Newt Gingrich released a 30-minute video today about how “the Obama administration is so anti‑oil” that they’ve forced the price of gas to go up.
But there’s little truth to claims that Obama has curbed U.S. oil production and driven up gas prices in the process. As NPR noted this morning, the number of drilling rigs in U.S. oil fields has quadrupled under Obama and domestic oil production hit an 8-year high in 2011. For the first time in 60 years, the U.S. is now a net fuel exporter...So why are gas prices so high? As McClatchy’s Kevin Hall explains today, there is a systemic problem: speculation...As Hall reports:
A McClatchy review of the latest Commitment of Traders report from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which regulates oil trading, shows that producers and merchants made up just 36 percent of all contracts traded in the week ending Feb. 14 while speculators who will never take delivery of the oil made up 64 percent.
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Finally, after many delays, the government board responsible for regulating commodity futures markets finalized a rule in October to limit speculation, a power it was given by the Dodd-Frank Wall street reform law. However, the rule won’t go into effect until next October, as the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) needs to collect “one year of interest data” first. The financial industry is fighting the new rule, but just today, the CFTC took action against a company in different market, providing an example of how the energy regulation can effectively work.
http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2012/02/22/430184/blame-oil-speculators-for-gas-prices/
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YES, the rise in global oil prices this year IS due to oil speculators, just as the rise in oil prices during 2007 and the earlier rise in oil prices was! It's those "free market" profiteering speculators who are doing the most to drive up oil prices, not the Obama administration's resistance to allowing the Koch brothers to drill anywhere, any time, and without those bothersome environmental and safety regulations that "fibbertarian" ideologues hate so much.
What the Democratic Party ought to emphasize is that it's the speculators, not President Obama's policies, that are driving up global and US crude oil prices. Moreover, President Obama slowed down an earlier speculative frenzy by threatening to release oil reserves onto the market. Also, the point should be made that while President Obama and other Democrats are willing to spike such speculative efforts, a Republican White House and a Republican-controlled House or Senate would be more than willing to let the speculators have a free hand in gouging American petroleum consumers.
Will the DNC show the mother-wit to use such rebuttals against Republican/right-wing propaganda?
I fear the worst. 
Tax increase at the pump is 100% responsible for the rise in Gas Price.
Every gallon of gas sold at the pump contains 10% ethanol & is called E10. Ethanol had replaced 15% of the gasoline sold in this country. 10% was sold as E10 & 5% was sold as E85. On January 1, 2012 the 45 cent tax cut on ethanol was not renewed because the USG needs more tax money. This increased the tax everyone paid at the pump by 5 cents since all gasoline is E10. For E85 users the tax increased by 38 cents per gallon. E85 users switched to E10 gasoline driving up gasoline demand 5% since then. The sudden price spike on the first day of 2012 is the tax hike & the continuing rise is caused by demand increase until the price rises by 38 to 45 cents so E85 use will compete once again holding gas prices in check. Also North Carolina increased their gas tax by 20 cents on the same date.
