Thursday morning however, the IntercontinetalExchange Inc., or ICE as its more fondly known, refused to be the whipping boy. In prior hearings the exchange has been accused of allowing traders to have unfettered access to the oil futures market, allowing them to drive prices skyward.
Testimony Thursday from Charles A. Vice, the Atlanta-based exchange's president, was defiant. Not only did he defend the exchange's practices but said that ICE's over-the-counter markets "have no bearing on the price of crude oil and do not set the price for major benchmark products." Vice also lashed out at fellow panel member Michael Greenberger, a former Commodities Futures Trading Commission regulator and currently a professor at the University of Maryland law school, referring to him as a self-styled expert who is espousing "inaccurate and inflammatory" statements.
Greenberger has testified to Congress in a number of hearings that infusions of funds from speculative traders in unregulated exchanges like ICE have fueled current energy prices and they must be stopped.
Vice however pointed to studies done by the CFTC and the International Energy Association, which said that speculation was not the reason the price of oil is on the rise. - Donna Block
It's day two of three days of hearings on Capitol Hill, where lawmakers from the House Committee on Agriculture are once again rounding up the usual suspects as they look for answers to why the price of oil is surging. 
