Commercial end-users of oil such as airlines and trucking companies who once dominated 70 percent of the market for market for future deliveries of oil now represent just 30 percent. Non-commercial financial speculators now dominate 70 percent of the market.
That is a fundamental shift in commodities trading. And when the supply margins are narrow, as they are now, controlling a relatively small amount of petroleum (or in this case, gasoline) can have a significant impact on pricing, as we saw in 2008.
I am not saying speculation is the only factor, far from it. The real blame lies with the nitwits such as Obama and his minions who try to sandbag production increases. But I am saying there should be position limits on those who are neither producers nor end users.
The problem is with how you read the stuff you quoted and proceeded to fail to understadn what you read.
For example, Delta airlines purchased the 185,000 barrel per day ConocoPhillips refinery in Traner, Pennsylvania to mitigate the crack spread differential in cost for some its aviation fuel. This had the effect of removing some of Delta Airlines share of the market speculation, which in turn increased the share for market spculators. So, the shift in percentages does nto mean what you choose to imply that it means at all.
Indeed, the Federal Government policies, especially the EPA policies and policies of states like California, are responsible for the skyrocketing increases in prices for gasoline.
Start with the wholesale and deliberate sabotage and destruction of the economy. The decreases in the U.S. consumption of gasoline had been due to the lack of sales and economic activity caused by the impoverishment of the consumers. Lower sales of gasoline means fewer customers for the refineries and their products. Refineries have to be kept in constant production to avoid damage and maintenance costs over and above the routine shutdowns for maintenance. If a refiner is unable to sell enough refined gasoline and other distallates at prices sufficient to justify the continued operation of the refinery, the refinery must either be sold to another business or it must be shutdown.
Once a refinery is shutdown, it must either be mothballed for a short enough interval for it to be restorred to full operation in the near future, or it must be demolished. Once a refinery is shutdown and demolished, it cannot be rebuilt bevause the EPA has made it almost impossible to build a petroleum refinery in the United States. Consequently, oil refineries are becoming fewer and fewer due to progressive political attrition and destruction of the domestic refineries. If the trend wre allowed to continue, the United States will in the forseeable future U.S. gasoline marketers will find it necessary to export domestic oil production to foreign refineries and then import the refined gasoline and aviation fuel back into the United States at vastly increased costs. Some companies are already looking at the prospect of constructing tanker ships for the transport of gasoline from foreign refineries.
Before you go around trying to scapegoat investors who are financing oil reserves for the small fraction of the total market of petroleum out of their own pockets, you had better look at the actual barrels of petroleum being produced andd sold versus the number of barrels of petroleum being traded by speculators on the commodities markets. Speculators simply cannot inflate the contract prices which are not sold on the commodities markets and they are unable to trade in the first place, which means the vast bulk of petroleum sold around the world.
If you want o blame and scapegoat someone for the high gasoline prices, why don’t ou start with the people who are blocking the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline and the people who are blocking the continued operation of existing oil refineries and the construction of new oil refineries. Obama and the Obama Administration aer blocking the keystone XL pipeline as payback for the political campaign monies from Warren Buffet and George Soros. Warren Buffet’s Berkshire hathaway owns the Burlington Northern & Santa Fe railroad that is the only economical means of transporting the Bakken oil production to the refiners. The keystone XL pipeline would end that monopoly and lower the costs for this petroleum and make it possible to lower gasoline prices in the northwest. Yet here you are trying to demonize, villify, and lynch the reputations of the speculators who are helping to finance lower prices at their own expense or profit.