Is there an oil conspiracy?

Easy answer no. More complicated is to do the debate with liberals who want to "blame" someone for the high oil and thus gasoline prices. Blame speculators, blame Bush for invading Iraq, blame big businesses for global warming, blame the big business for sending too much industry to China.

Can we stop the blame game? The oil markets are a very efficient market for a commodity.

As Carpe Diem says "If the inventory data are correct, consumers were burning all that $135 oil."

"Why is the price of oil a difficult concept for some on the left? They want to come up with some grand conspiracy theory and rush to command and control legislation claiming that Americans have a “right to lower gas prices.” This is at best silly but at worst dangerous. This mentality hinders future economic growth by giving people a victim mentality and stifles the entrepreneurial spirit by making it seem as though government is the only one who can solve the problem. Congress is now fixated on speculators. If Congress wants to weed out speculators, they should allow more potential supply. Anticipation of increased supply will put downward pressure on future oil prices and hence the prices of these future contracts will decline. If these markets have run amok with speculators, these speculators will immediately see the value of their contract decline. (No one is going to want a speculators contract to buy a barrel of oil at $130 when they expect the price to be $100.) Hence Congress quickly punishes speculators in the most efficient way possible — using the market’s discipline rather than holding committee meetings and investigations and then imposing fines and then collecting fines and then who knows what." From the Foundry

From my perspective, naive as environmentalists may see me, we need more supply of all eneergy sources including oil. We need more speculators, the greater the number the more efficient the market. We need to encourage innovation on alternate fuels, but refrain from manipulating markets while "encouraging"