Responding to ongoing pressure from Senator Maria Cantwell, the Federal Trade Commission has just announced it’s going to be investigating increases in the price of oil, to determine if there’s been any “market manipulation.” (“If.” Cantwell recently got the CEO of Exxon Mobil, Rex Tillerson, to admit that oil–trading for just under $100 per barrel–should cost between $60 and $70 per barrel based purely on supply and demand.)

The FTC’s Jon Leibowitz wrote in a letter to Cantwell: “The Energy Information Administration reported that as of early May, U.S. refiners’ refining margins had increased more than 90 percent since the beginning of 2011, and U.S. refiners at that time were using only 81.7 percent of their capacity, representing a seven percent reduction from the same period in 2010.”

“In Washington state,” says Cantwell’s office in a release, “gas prices have gone up 74 cents-per-gallon over the last three months, and 93 cents-per-gallon over the last year, hurting small businesses and burdening families and the economic recovery.”

In his recent economic update, the state’s chief economist Arun Raha targeted the cost of petroleum: “The main reason why the 2% cut in payroll taxes this year has not been as stimulative to the economy as anticipated is because half of that tax cut is going overseas to pay for imported petroleum products.”

Ever since Enron’s backroom speculation in electricity came to light, Cantwell has been tightening up rules regarding speculation in energy (oil, natural gas, electricity) markets. Now part of the problem is simply getting regulatory bodies to regulate. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) is more than five months overdue on enforcing speculative position limits in oil markets, despite releasing data that shows the markets overrun by financial players:

Based upon CFTC data as of May 31, 2011, only about 12 percent of gross long positions and about 20 percent of gross short positions in the WTI crude oil market were held by producers, merchants, processors and users of the commodity.

Alaska Air is a leader among airlines that are taking up hedge positions against fuel price volatility–but that hedging only works if the market is pricing correctly to begin with.

The FTC investigation can make use of subpoenas, if necessary, to do its work, and the Petroleum Market Manipulation Rule enables the FTC to levy civil fines of $1 million per day.