Warren asks CFTC to probe oil moves

Senator Elizabeth Warren and Senator Sheldon Whitehouse asked the Commodity Futures Trading Commission on April 10 to investigate oil futures trades placed just before two Trump administration announcements on Iran. (banking.senate.gov) The senators said oil futures trading “surged dramatically” on March 23, minutes before President Donald Trump posted on Truth Social about talks with Iran that could de-escalate the war. They said the post lowered crude prices and lifted stock indexes, with no public news beforehand to explain the move. (banking.senate.gov) Bloomberg reported that contracts tied to at least 6 million barrels of Brent and West Texas Intermediate crude were sold in the two minutes starting at 6:49 a.m. in New York that day. The average for the same window over the previous five trading days was about 700,000 barrels. (bloomberg.com) The senators said a second episode came on April 7, hours before Trump announced a two-week ceasefire with Iran. They wrote that traders placed an approximately $950 million bet on oil prices falling before that announcement, which they said sent oil down about 15 percent. (banking.senate.gov) Oil futures are standardized contracts that let traders lock in a future price for crude, and they often move fast when war threatens supply. Iran matters because fighting around its exports and the Strait of Hormuz can change expectations for global oil flows within minutes. (iea.org) The Commodity Futures Trading Commission is the federal regulator for United States derivatives markets, including oil futures. Warren and Whitehouse asked Chairman Michael Selig to have enforcement staff examine whether material nonpublic government information was misused. (banking.senate.gov) The scrutiny did not start with Warren’s letter. Representative Ritchie Torres said on April 8 that more than $500 million in crude oil futures trades were made in the roughly 15 minutes before Trump’s March 23 announcement, and he asked the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission to investigate. (cnbc.com) The White House also moved after the March episode. Time reported that the White House Management Office sent staff a March 24 email warning against placing trades and bets using confidential information. (time.com) The senators gave the Commodity Futures Trading Commission until April 30 to respond in writing. Their letter says the question is whether these trades reflected luck, aggressive speculation, or access to government information before the public got it. (banking.senate.gov)