Really hard to say. Speculation has never been a problem because there was always approximately an equal number of people who thought a given item would go up or down. Nobody honestly thinks oil/gas is going to go down these days, everyone thinks its going to go up forever. Thus, we get fucked by the imbalance. If we didnt get speculation regulation, all we would really need to get that factor out of the market is a big group of really, really rich people willing to short oil for the greater good, and trust that they’ll get theirs. Short of a supply crunch or demand spike, they would. Speculation is self-fulfilling if you do it in big enough quantities.