. . . I've solved the oil "crisis"

Who'd'a thunk that if you read here long enough, we'll likely come up with the solution to every problem . . . we have one for oil and gasoline . . . just keep reading .....

The current oil prices continue creeping upward. Someone compared it to placing a frog into a "pond-temperature" pan of water, placing it on the stove, then putting heat under the pan.

Poor frog is fat, dumb, and happily swimming around in the pan and does not notice that the temperature is slowly increasing. Before the poor frog realizes his predicament and reacts properly, his "goose is cooked"! (I just wondered: Do frogs even have geese?) : )

Kinda what happened with the world oil market . . . gradual increases . . . ever so slowly . . . causing a few cents increase in the price we were paying at the pump for gasoline. Then, suddenly, like the frog in the pan, we discover the water's really gettin' hot!!

Suddenly, it costs $100 to fill the tank in the big gas-guzzling SUV, and the price is still rising!!

You know it's gotten really serious when General Motors announces the closing of their plants which manufacture the SUV, and hint that the Hummer brand might be for sale.(http://www.autoweek.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080603/FREE/57736413/1023/contact)

Having given this more than 15 minutes thought, I have solved the "oil crisis" problem. (Congress, you paying attention yet?)

The price per barrel of oil has been steadily increasing in the Commodities Market. The free market!!

That means that, if I have even an inexpensive account somewhere, I can buy options - for only a few cents on the dollar - to purchase whole tankers of oil at a time.

Now the trick is, I don't actually have a place to park that tanker of oil yet, so I purchase a future contract, to be delivered - let's say - in December 2008. While that actually wouldn't give me enough time to build a large enough port for parking the tanker, it also wouldn't be enough time to build a pipeline to a refinery to process my tanker of oil into gasoline, oil, diesel, kerosene, etc., either.

So, I really have no intention of taking delivery of 100,000 Dead Weight Tons of oil.

All I really want (and in fact, I'm betting on it!) is for the price of oil to move up only a few cents per barrel before I have to take delivery. Between now and December, upward price movement of such a few cents for each barrel of oil in that 100,000 tons means perhaps several 10s of thousands of dollars in profit for me.
Not only that, I did not have to build nor own a port, a pipeline, refinery, nor service station. All I owned was for a few weeks I had the right to purchase a tanker of oil at the price at which we had contracted.

That's how I would make my profit: by speculating that the price of oil would go up during the time I owned the option, and that I could sell my option - at a profit - to some other speculator, or to an oil company with the capacity to process it.

The solution: Require that anyone trading in the oil futures market have the capacity of taking delivery of everything for which the speculator has purchased options.

That would keep only the oil "pipeline" people (pun was intended!) people in the market and keep the pure speculators out. At some point quite soon after such a regulation, the price of oil would reach some equilibrium controlled only by supply and demand.

It is cruel and obscene what speculators have done to the price of oil, which has had trickle-down (or perhaps "trickle-up") effects on almost everything else which we purchase. It will take something drastic to turn this around. I think only Congress can do it. Then, the State Department would need to negotiate with other countries to pass similar laws.

If you also believe this idea would work, please contact your Congressman (or Congresswoman) and US Senator and ask them to do it . . . and soon!!