New Jersey governor Corzine supports Obama for greater oversight of oil trading
25 Jun 2008
Former Goldman Sachs group chairman Jon Corzine, curently the governor of the state of New Jersey says he would like to see greater oversight of oil commodity trading.
In an interview to Bloomberg Radio, Corzine said that ''some of the speculative elements''' could be responsible for driving oil prices ''beyond what seems reasonable.'' He said that the the federal government should oversee oil trading just as it supervises other commodity markets.
Over the weekend, Democrat US Presidential hopeful Senator Barack Obama had said that "as president he would strengthen government oversight of energy traders he blames in large part for the skyrocketing price of oil." Obama had isolated what has been dubbed the 'Enron loophole' for allowing speculators to take the cost of fuel to present levels, by operating outside federal regulations.
The Washington Post had reported that Senator Obama "laid out a four-step programme that would, among other things, close" the loophole. Obama's economic adviser Jason Furman described the three other components of the plan as, to ensure that US energy futures cannot be traded in offshore, unregulated markets; to work toward international regulation of oil futures markets, in cooperation with like-minded countries; and to have both the Federal Trade Commission and the Justice Department investigate the oil markets."
In his interview, Corzine said, ''We created a loophole, an exclusion, for energy markets in electricity and oil. We ought to have a systematic oversight of the oil commodity markets just like we do in other commodity markets.'' Corzine said lifting the moratorium on offshore drilling would damage the state's $35 billion per annum tourism industry, taking a swipe at Republican Presidential candidate and Arizona Senator John McCain's proposal of allowing states to decide on oil exploration off their coastlines.
Corzine also said that he has plans to campaign for Illinois Senator Barack Obama in the latter's campaign for the US Presidency.
