I 
112TH CONGRESS 
2D SESSION 
H. R. 5186 
To prevent excessive speculation in energy commodities, and for other 
purposes. 
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 
APRIL 27, 2012 
Mr. MARKEY (for himself, Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts, Ms. DELAURO, Ms. 
EDWARDS, Mr. LARSON of Connecticut, Mr. MORAN, Mr. PASCRELL, and 
Mr. SCOTT of Virginia) introduced the following bill; which was referred 
to the Committee on Agriculture 
A BILL 
To prevent excessive speculation in energy commodities, and 
for other purposes. 
Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representa-
tives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, 
SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE. 
This Act may be cited as the ‘‘Halt Index Trading 
of Energy Commodities (HITEC) Act’’. 
SEC. 2. FINDINGS. 
The Congress finds the following: 
(1) Investment in our commodities markets has 
grown dramatically in recent years. While the vol-
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ume of futures contracts traded in the United States 
was only 630,000,000 in 1998, that volume 
ballooned to over 3,200,000,000 in 2007. 
(2) According to testimony provided to the 
Committee on Natural Resources of the House of 
Representatives, this growth in volume has been ac-
companied by a huge increase in the percentage of 
commodity futures contracts owned by speculators. 
While physical hedgers used to account for 70 per-
cent of futures contracts and speculators accounted 
for just 30 percent, those numbers have reversed, 
and speculators now possess 70 percent of all open 
commodity futures contracts. 
(3) Almost all of this increase in speculation 
has been caused by a surge in trading of commodity 
index funds. 
(4) Commodity index trading is investing in 
funds or other financial products which are indexed 
to changes in value of various commodities traded on 
commodity markets in the United States. These 
funds can be tied to a basket of different commod-
ities or just to a single commodity. 
(5) Investment in funds tied to these indexes 
has grown enormously in the last 2 decades. Accord-
ing to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, 
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a partial tally of net long positions in United States 
markets 
in 
these 
indexes 
reached 
to 
over 
$160,000,000,000 in February 2012, and net long 
positions in West Texas Intermediate Crude Oil 
reached to over $39,000,000,000. Many of the inves-
tors in these funds are institutional clients, such as 
pension funds and universities. 
(6) The vast majority of investors in commodity 
index funds do not use the commodities involved. 
These investors are only interested in profiting from 
a rise in value of the commodities and must sell 
their interests in the commodities before the futures 
contracts they own close. This practice, known as 
rolling, causes hundreds of billions of dollars of addi-
tional trading to flow through our commodities mar-
kets each month, artificially increasing the volatility 
of our markets and driving up prices for many of 
our commodities, including crude oil. 
(7) Because our commodities markets are tied 
to the actual retail prices of our commodities, the 
artificial and excessive levels of speculation have sig-
nificantly increased the retail prices our citizens pay 
for their commodities. In the case of oil, excessive 
speculation may have added nearly $1.00 to the per 
gallon price of gasoline. 
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(8) As sharp increases in energy costs reduce 
economic growth, these commodity index funds are 
creating a weight on the overall economy, threat-
ening to delay our Nation’s full recovery from the 
2008 financial crisis and recession. 
(9) Thus, commodity index funds hurt economic 
growth and consumer’s wallets. 
(10) In the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform 
Act, Congress ordered the Commodity Futures 
Trading Commission to limit the number of posi-
tions that a person or a class of persons may hold 
in the commodities markets. Congress has taken ini-
tial steps to set boundaries on commodity trading, 
but more must be done to address the role of com-
modity index funds in the energy commodity mar-
kets. 
(11) Because oil prices have been at elevated 
levels for much of the last year, Congress believes 
the situation is an emergency and warrants imme-
diate action to ban commodity index trading in en-
ergy commodities. 
SEC. 3. PREVENTION OF EXCESSIVE SPECULATION IN EN-
ERGY COMMODITIES. 
Section 4c of the Commodity Exchange Act (7 U.S.C. 
6c) is amended by adding at the end the following: 
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cipally of swaps involving, or contracts of sale for fu-
ture delivery of, more than 1 energy commodity. 
‘‘(C) The term ‘energy commodity’ means crude 
oil, natural gas, or any other product (other than an 
agricultural commodity) that is produced or refined, 
in whole or in part, from crude oil or natural gas 
and that may be used as fuel for a power source of 
any kind, but does not include electricity. 
‘‘(D) The term ‘excluded investor’ means a per-
son with respect to whom there is no position in at 
least 1 energy commodity which, if held by the per-
son, would be considered a bona fide hedging posi-
tion (within the meaning of section 4a(c)(1)). 
‘‘(E) The term ‘swap’ shall have the meaning 
the term would have if the provisions of title VII of 
the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer 
Protection Act defining, and authorizing further def-
inition of, the term were in effect.’’. 
Æ 
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