Speculators blamed for high oil prices

WASHINGTON, May 25 (UPI) -- Oil speculators may be partly to blame for skyrocketing U.S. gasoline prices, analysts say.

The price of crude oil has more than doubled, increasing $70 a barrel in the past year, and some experts say speculation could account for up to $30 of that, the Houston Chronicle reported Sunday.

To help reduce the affect speculators have on the price at the pump, some are calling on Congress to probe the role commodity market players such as the nation's pension funds, endowments and other institutional investors play in determining the price of oil.

Institutional investors' interest in oil "is accelerating and emboldening the price rise," said Mark Lapolla of Sixth Man Research, an Atlanta financial research firm. "We just can't quantify it."

Oil futures last week shot past $133 a barrel, while prices at the gas pump reached new heights -- to an average of nearly $3.88 a gallon Friday for regular, the newspaper said.

Federal regulators admit commodity futures markets have seen "robust growth," but say market forces are to blame.

"We really don't think the case has been made that speculation is driving prices," John Fenton, director of market surveillance for the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, recently told a congressional panel.