Washington’s move to clamp down on oil speculators has triggered an angry backlash from traders and commodity exchanges, which have accused the United States of branding them scapegoats for the high price of oil.

The American futures market regulator, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), said this week that it was investigating whether some traders had tried to manipulate the oil price. In the hope of identifying any dealers trying to rig the market, the CFTC said that it was working with the Financial Services Authority (FSA) to force greater disclosure by oil trading firms about their positions.

It is understood that over the past few months the CFTC has requested information on individual traders and specific firms from the FSA. The requests for information, believed to include past files and data on trading behaviour, have been passed to Washington under a memorandum of understanding initially signed in 2005.

Such cooperation between the US and Britain on suspected financial crime is not unusual – the FSA helped American authorities to compile the legal case against the NatWest Three.

Yesterday, however, traders, oil company executives and exchanges on both sides of the Atlantic accused Washington of blaming the oil market for the soaring price of crude, which breached $135 a barrel this month.

Phil Flynn, a trader with Alaron Trading in Chicago, said: “When the CFTC spoke to Congress a few weeks ago they said there wasn’t any manipulation in the market and that market dynamics were driving the price. Two weeks later, after pressure from Washington, they have changed their minds. I am concerned that politicians are under such pressure that they will come up with some damaging regulation to try to heal a problem that does not exist.”

One senior UK oil executive said: “Washington are blaming ‘speculation’ for the high oil price. But speculation is how a proper, legal, financial market works. People trade discrepancies in the market.” He noted that pension funds had been buying oil shares to offset the effect of the weakening dollar on the value of their portfolios. “Buying oil to hedge against the dollar is not an illegal practice. How do these people think we can manipulate a market of this size?”

Both the FSA and the CFTC could demand to see more details of trading positions, more often. Market manipulation is difficult to prove. A regulator would either have to find that a trader was deliberately trying to move the closing price, for example, at the end of a day’s trading, or have to discover on tapped telephone lines that a trader was spreading false rumours.

Mr Flynn said: “There are plenty of other places in the world that would love to have this trade, like Dubai.”

Meanwhile, Lehman Brothers analysts gave warning yesterday that oil had reached “unsustainable” levels and was heading for a sharp correction, and likened the spiralling price to the dot-com boom and bust of 2001.

Michael Waldron, of Lehman, said in a report that the correction could come as early as September. “We think that the crude oil market should turn and we think it will happen by the end of the year,” he said.

The report predicted that Brent, which stood at $128.10 a barrel last night, could fall to $90 a barrel by the first quarter of next year.

Times Recommends

• Minister in talks with Saudis to protect creditors
• Premier Inn hits back in £29-a-room row
• Bankers hit back at 'populist' bonus supertax