The Bush Junta Has Been A Boon To Market Manipulators In Every Energy Industry -- Not Just Electricity And Oil

The September 4th issue of Platts Inside FERC reports that:

"Since 2000, [gee, what happened in 2000, I wonder?] an anomaly has appeared: Demand, domestic production and net imports have all remained largely unchanged fomr the 1990s -- yet well-head prices have risen sharply," the National Legal and Policy Center said Tuesday, "None of the economic fundametnals can begin to account for the 300% increase in wellehad prices from 1999 to 2006."

In letters to [Federal Energy Regulatory Commission] Chairman Joseph Kelliher and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, NLPC Chairman Ken Boehm demanded a probe fo "why the volatility and prices of the current gas futures marktes have departed so fundamentally from the underlying economic fundamentals."

. . .

The issue knocked at FERC's door earlier this year when a group of Midwest attorneys general released a report blaming the rising volume of specultative trading in unregulated electronic futures markets -- especially by banks and other financial institutions -- for high gas prices. It went beyond that to say that the commission and the CFTC were significantly downplaying the impact of the futures market on wholesale natural gas prices. . . . NLPC's Boehm said speculation market-tampering has cost end-users billions of dollars over the past six years in higher gas costs and the the prolem requires "some real investigation on the Hill."

Yeah, that'll happen. Not. At least not until the Democrats re-take the Hill.