Gas Prices and the Oil Supply  The actual price of a barrel of
oil is constantly changing, since oil is a commodity that is
traded on the futures market. Buying and selling oil futures is
called speculating, because you're making trades based on
expectations of future supply and demand. When Israel threatens
to bomb Iran, for example, speculators drive up the price of oil
to hedge against a possible shortage in the future. President
Obama called on Congress to impose tighter regulations on oil
speculators, but even if Congress acted (which it hasn't), the
rest of the world would have to follow suit to really affect
global gas prices [source: Yetiv].  What about increasing the
oil supply? Can't the president boost U.S. production? It's true
that aggressive increases in U.S. oil production would bring the
global supply closer to the demand for oil. Unfortunately, the
U.S. is such a small player on the international oil scene -- we
control only 2 percent of the world's oil reserves -- that even
if we doubled our