Its going to be very hard to rein in the futures traders. If you rememeber, before oil started trading on the NYMEX in 1983, OPEC set the price of crude oil. At that time it was very common for OPEC countries to “leapfrog” each other to set higher prices...and that was when the oil glut was beginning. If they “leapfrogged” in the early 1980’s when supply outstripped demand, can you imagine what would happen now with demand outstripping supply.
The other problem with regulators trying to control trading on the NYMEX is that if traders/speculators aren’t able to get what they want on the NYMEX they will simply trade for oil on other exchanges. There are many exchanges in the world and some are poorly regulated. Do we want to drive the oil traders to those exchanges?
The reality is that international trading on the markets is still the best way to price the benchmark crudes. If regulators try to play games with the system we might go from a state of expensive oil to oil shortages.
Why should we want to rein them in?