Three cheers for Robert Halfon MP. (Pictured left) Our tireless parliamentary insider has secured a promise in The Commons that the Government will do what we've been asking them for months - find out why the price of oil has been being going up when global demand has been going down. Robert and FairFuel have held deep suspicions that recent oil prices don't reflect the dynamics of supply and demand and the shock testimony from an oil trader proves that we've been right. This is historic stuff and will hopefully blow open the previously hidden inner workings of the oil trading market. And its a complicated one. We're not saying that the high street oil majors are being devious and fixing prices, but we are worried that the slew of commodity brokers, pension funds, banks and fund managers who trade oil and futures before the stuff gets near to the pump, could be manipulating the numbers.

America, Austria and Germany are all doing the same thing and it looks like the growing body of evidence is pointing to the fact that fiddling of benchmark oil figures could have become a routine route to profit for the crude commodities industry. Robert and I believe that there's as much as $30 added to the price of oil simply by speculation. The damage that extra $30 is doing to the global economy is incalculable and the Government must to do everything it can to make sure our fragile UK economy is protected from unfair profiteering.

So if you've wondered if its been worth supporting Robert's and FairFuel's efforts (and so many of you have been with us from the beginning) here's your proof. Together we're slowly, but effectively, changing the mechanics of fuel duty and making oil pricing more transparent. We've also achieved one other very important success - established without doubt that the UK has a road economy that's totally dependent on fuel and to try and force people off the roads and onto a public transport system that doesn't exist is absolutely nuts, naive and economically suicidal. Watch this space.

Quentin Willson

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Here we go again. Dire warnings from the papers predicting that within a month we'll have the highest petrol price ever. And like me, the AA say that soaring pump prices have got nothing to do with supply and demand and everything to do with speculators. Since June oil has gone from $90 to $114 even though in July China's imports of the stuff were at an historic nine-month low. So you tell me who's forcing up oil wholesale prices, because its definitely not Europe Asia or the US?

But you know the answer to that one. Its those pernicious commodity traders and fund managers again. And the government knows too, because this week they approached the International Energy Agency (IEA) to discuss releasing oil stocks to cool prices. When news of that meeting broke, Brent Crude fell by $1.51. Traders had been battling it up on news of threats from Israel to bomb Iranian nuclear facilities to the point where closing prices for future month oil contracts hit $116.9. This is a market (and one in which the price of virtually everything we do or buy is embedded) that's in the total control of a few thousand blokes in posh shoes and braces. Should we really be letting this happen? Should we be allowing these pariahs to deliberately push unleaded petrol to its highest price ever and the UK's economic recovery off a cliff?

When those front month future contracts closed at $116.9, one oil expert said it "the oil price appears to be nearing the maximum tolerable limit". Just consider the choice of that word 'tolerable'. This is a game to these people where they play with the market to see what 'tolerable' and what's not. To see how much inflationary mayhem and financial retraction they can cause. Like that line in King Lear - 'they kill us for their sport'.

Before the end of 2012 I want the Chancellor to agree to further hold back the planned 3p litre rise that he's set for January (if he doesn't he'll be holding a loaded Luger to his head and that of the economy), but also to put in place an Oil Inquiry, like Leveson, where the major players and protagonists in the oil commodity and futures markets are asked, under oath, to tell us all exactly how much their market intervention influences the price of oil. A full, transparent, canter through their arcane and complicated market. If they've nothing to hide, they've nothing to fear. Let's have full disclosure.

And I want the Treasury, The Bank of England and Number 10 to start behaving like they want to do something about oil speculation and the damage its doing to the UK economy. No more old boys stuff, no more whispering. A bold statement of intent that they're going to properly investigate the oil market for the first time in its entire history.

Let's start by putting on a little pressure shall we? 

Quentin Willson

Here's a tiny example of how oil prices can be hiked up in a single hour. This week a couple of Tweets from an anonymous Russian source wrongly alleged that President Assad of Syria had been killed or injured. Word spread like wildfire across the oil traders desks and in the sixty minutes that it took for the information to be discredited (I wonder why it took so long), the price of crude jumped $1.17 cents a barrel. That might not sound a lot in isolation, but if on that particular day you were looking to shift a couple of hundred thousand barrels and you did a deal in that sixty-minute window, you'd be rather pleased with yourself. Absolutely delighted if you had a tanker or two holding millions of barrels of the stuff. And if you were an oil company who rashly happened to buy those millions of barrels, you'd have to pass that deliberately inflated price all the way down the supply chain to the poor hapless consumer at the pumps. That's the way it works folks. When you stare at the digits on that petrol or diesel pump, watching them inflate like the currency of a banana republic, around 30% of the price of every barrel of oil is due solely to the continuous market manipulation of fund managers and oil traders. On average you and I pay $30 more per barrel than we should. Oh, and an even more sizeable, but equally questionable, chunk of your cash goes in government taxes.

And to see who gets the lion's share let's look at the numbers. Today I paid £1.37 for a litre of unleaded. Over 60% of that goes to the government, up to 5% to the petrol station owner and the remaining 30% or so to the oil company. The actual cost of the petrol in a £60 fill up before tax is just £24. Of that £1.37 I spent on my litre of unleaded, the wholesale price of the petrol was 51p, the garage profit margin 4.87p, the fuel duty 57.95p and VAT at 22.97p So the government takes the most, followed by oil speculators, then the oil company and then the petrol retailer. To be fair to the oil majors they have to invest billions to get their oil out of ever more difficult places and then refine and distribute it. The oil company's actual operating profit margin can be between 7 to 20%. In 2009 the average oil major margin was 8%. And petrol retailers tell me that they're lucky to retain a margin of 2% on every litre they sell.

So the absolute villains here are the government and oil speculators. Reduce or control their financial take on every litre and the price of the world's petrol and diesel would drop like a falling Steinway. Its as simple as that. The complicated bit is how to make it happen. FairFuel has always believed that relentless pressure and complete transparency of markets and taxation regimes is the only way ahead. And when you consider the massive benefits that lower fuel prices would have on the global economy, you'd think there would be armies of Harvard and Oxford PHDs working on how to make The Big Change happen right now. I know I sound like a misty-eyed idealist, but something's got to give. The current way that oil and fuel is priced and taxed is nothing sort of iniquitous and absurd. But why are you and I, gentle reader, the only one's who seem to care at all?

Quentin Willson  Please sign up and support FairFuelUK. We need every signature to put pressure on all involved with pricing our petrol and diesel