The ongoing debate and the back and forth allegations on speculators being the culprits and not the supply chain, throws open another wide question…who are these speculators?

Global business experts have listed ‘Commodities traders, hedge funds with long experience, super-rich investors in sovereign wealth funds from Middle Eastern and Asian nations, and recently, the entry of big pension and index funds that invest on behalf of ordinary working Americans’ as culprits of the skyrocketing oil prices.

But that is only half the truth….the supply crunch from Russia (thanks to recent Kremlin’s interference in TNK-BP) and Nigeria’s supply shutdown due to militant attacks (a loss of 345,000 bpd is hard to redistribute!), not to mention the MENA(Middle east and North Africa) oil producers’ lack of transparency on the exact reserves, all this proves, the oil supply chain is still the weakest link and simply not able to meet the growing demand from international consumers….

look at the last 3 years production…it has remained unchanged despite the recent surge in demand ….with production still on the low end( 923 billion barrels of estimated reserves vs. only 14.15 billion barrels production/year).

This brings out one very obvious question!........shouldn’t the oil producers be focusing more efforts on prospecting and extraction?

It becomes all the more murky when we realize that most OPEC members are also the major shareholders in these speculative institutions…

What are the UN and the other fancy-titled groups of nations doing to stem the crisis? Are these global organizations just paper tigers?.. being dictated by a bigger entity? Or are these powerful ones also part of the cartel that is responsible for the crises? Doesn’t the OPEC benefit at all from this rising price situation? What about the rapidly declining (at least economically!) super powers like the USA? Is this their ploy of getting back their economic super power status by pulling down growing economies?

Another question that keeps coming back to me is: why has the OPEC/speculators chosen this particular time to manipulate the markets…is there some kind of an energy revolution waiting on the wings that might bring down the oil value considerably in the next few years? What will happen to the fate of these oil producers, then? Is this why they are scurrying about, investing heavily in non-oil ventures?

How do emerging nations and developing countries tackle this growth-curbing (to some countries, even economy-crippling) phenomenon?

Shouldn’t there be a cap or ceiling of some sort for the speculators? Shouldn’t the Oil Producers be banned from speculation on their own commodities? Shouldn’t there be a restriction or a limit on the range of commodities they can speculate on? Why is the USA, the self appointed watch dog on oil and other fuel-based (nuclear) commodities? If the USA can produce their own oil shouldn’t they be restricted or at least limited to buying oil from the other markets?

Shouldn’t they alternatively, be penalized for their atrocious food wastages($100 billion of food wastage annually, not to mention the mindless spending of over $ 440 billion on their Military budget which could have gone into oil exploration, agricultural research and economic development in the rest of the world (I raise this point because, they (Americans) claim to be the do-gooders of the world!)instead of letting them get away with brazen statements about the economic growth in India and China fueling food shortages worldwide?!

A workable solution for all would be if these oil producers were fixed a production target and made to commit on a year on year production increase in exchange for food and non-oil commodities.

As a business case, seeing how strong China has emerged in recent times despite the wildly fluctuating economic turbulences worldwide, it seems Global Communism might be the real answer for worldwide economic stability!..or is it?..hmmm…..I wonder…..