Up until a few years ago, oil speculation wasn't really a problem: Crude oil futures could only be bought and sold on the NYMEX, where they were regulated by the Commodity Futures and Trading Commission (CFTC), a government organization that was created in 1974 to -- you guessed it -- protect the market against speculators. For decades, the CFTC did its job well, watching over sales of oil futures and ensuring that investors didn't drive up prices to make a profit at the expense of consumers. But in 2000, everything changed.

That year, two events effectively crippled the CFTC. The first was the passage of a provision of the Commodity Futures Modernization Act -- sometimes called the Enron loophole -- that made it legal for companies to trade oil futures outside of the NYMEX in what are called over-the-counter (OTC) trades. The same year, the London-based Intercontinental Exchange made it possible for investors to buy and sell European oil futures, and offered a platform for OTC trading. In addition to driving up the global price of oil, futures trading on the ICE began to have a direct impact on U.S. gas prices in 2006, when the ICE gained the right to list U.S. oil futures. Since the CFTC could only regulate trades on the NYMEX, those events made it possible for speculators to escape oversight.

While it's difficult to prove whether or not speculators are directly responsible for high gas prices, most analysts agree that some portion of the current high cost of gas is attributable to the buying and selling of oil futures. After the sharp rise and steep fall oil prices took in 2007 and 2008, investigators found that 81% of gas contracts on the NYMEX had been held by speculators. In fact, 11% were held by a single company, Vitol. With that kind of pull, anti-speculation analysts argue, there's no question that oil traders can manipulate oil prices.