Nothing appears to generate efforts towards transparency and compliance more than the threat of government regulation and on Thursday the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) and Intercontinental Exchange (ICE) announced steps to create greater transparency in the reporting of energy trading in general and crude oil in particular.
The CFTC announced “multiple energy market initiatives,” in a release yesterday. That was followed by a release from ICE stating that it had facilitated the development of a cross-border program to provide enhancements to its energy market data reporting in concert with the CFTC and the U.K. Financial Services Authority (FSA) related to its West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude oil futures contract.
The moves may have been prompted by multiple efforts in Congress to place blame somewhere for rising energy costs. The Oil Trading Transparency Act seeks to apply U.S. reporting requirements to non-U.S. markets and the Consumer-First Energy Act of 2008 calls for higher margins on crude oil futures.

