Virgin Atlantic chairman Sir Richard Branson is to lobby the Government for tougher regulation of the oil industry.
Branson, in Florida to mark the 25th anniversary of Virgin flights to Miami, told Financial Mail he was seeking a meeting with the Prime Minister to urge him to work with US regulators to curb price-fixing and excessive speculating by traders, which have both helped to push up oil prices sharply in recent years.
‘I think there should be strict rules set as to how much trading can be done in the oil market,’ he said.
‘Billions of dollars is being traded on oil futures, many times more than the amount of oil in the world, which is falsely pushing up the price of oil.
It was hard enough dealing with Opec, he said, without dealing with traders who are ‘allowed to make large sums at the expense of us all’.
Branson said oil users were paying 25 to 30 per cent more than necessary.
Read more: http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/article-2005266/Branson-calls-stricter-controls-oil-industry.html#ixzz1PfUA5Pek
I read this dross and almost fell of my chair with chuckle chuckle.
Speculators/Investors/Traders have done the world a favor in my opinion, without high oil prices there would simply be a continued lack of investment & therefore a lack of supply.
Richard the reason we have high oil prices is because supply/demand is tight, hardly any spare capacity, tensions in the middle east, growth in china/india, lack of investment in the 80s & 90s.
Go and find a lot of OIl or develop a viable energy source to replace Oil if you want to drive the speculators our of business.
Would'nt recommend you spend your time talking to politicans, they make the problems worse. But at the end of the day Mr Virgin Atlantic your only talking your own book.
