Comment Text:
The Pacific Energy Policy Center (PEPC) is a small nonprofit energy policy advisory organization led by retired California energy policy makers from the state's energy regulatory agencies, the legislature and the major California investor owned utilities. PEPC support more aggressive federal actions to monitor and regulate the production, storage, transportation and sale of fossil fuels, including oil, natural gas and related products. We also support more stringent oversight and regulation of the sale of those products within the United States and abroad. We believe that for far too long, oil and related fossil fuel markets have been manipulated in ways which maximize profits for a limited number of special interest groups by driving up the cost of those products to the public.
For example, we have seen a correlation between oil and gasoline supplies in California and increases in exports of those products by the major oil companies to other state's and countries in a manner that creates artificial instate shortages to keep prices higher than they would normally be in a free market. We believe that Wall Street speculators have also colluded in ways that artificially reduce supplies and increase prices of these products to all customers at the retail level. For far too long the CFTC and its staff have been subject to regulatory capture, overly influenced by the very parties it was created to regulate. Any actions that can be taken to increase the independence of the CFTC from this kind of influence is a step in the right direction.
We also strongly oppose any actions to allow for increased exports of domestically produced oil, natural gas or related products from the United State's if such actions reduce the domestic supply of those products and artificially increase the price to domestic customers. We believe that the current glut of oil and natural gas is keeping prices down and encouraging global companies to bring manufacturing jobs back to the US, and that that trend should be encourage by limiting exports of fossil fuel products produced here. Thank you for this opportunity to comment.
