The U.S. Department of Energy has always focused on the supply, disposition and operational aspects of petroleum. Now, with gas prices remaining stubbornly high despite ample supplies and light demand, DOE appears to be looking more closely at the influence of money flowing in and out of the oil market.

Energy Secretary Steven Chu this week told an industry conference in Saudi Arabia that price volatility seems to be far in excess of demand and supply and that a new DOE initiative aims to try and find out how much the volatility has been increased by large financial institutions taking positions.

"Certainly, the volatility of the price seems to be far in excess of demand and supply," Chu said at the Riyadh-hosted International Energy Forum, according to a report by Agence France Presse.

In other words, if it were only energy industry insiders who were bidding for petroleum products on the open market, there would probably be much less upward pressure on prices. When financial traders, who never intend to take delivery of a drop of oil, are competing with refiners and other suppliers, the competition is always going to make the price higher than market fundamentals would dictate.

All of this has enormous impact on consumers, since the price they pay at the pump is influenced by the price refiners have to pay for crude oil. When crude prices go up, so do retail gasoline prices.

The Energy Information Administration, DOE's analysis arm, recently invited public comments and recommendations to identify the best data for understanding energy and financial markets. Its Energy and Financial Markets Initiative, first announced in September 2009, "recognizes that energy markets have developed in ways that were not anticipated at the time EIA's information program was established," and is intended to assess how market influences, such as speculation, hedging, investment and exchange rates impact price volatility.

The agency is calling for comments in a few topic areas: how to identify information about energy market behavior, including physical oil assets, exchange-traded futures and options, behavior in over-the-counter markets for financially-settled swaps and options; frequency of information and types of recurring reports and analyses and ways that market information could be obtained from other federal agencies and non-governmental sources.

The EIA is also taking comments on whether it should either accelerate the release schedules for information currently collected or increase the frequency of data collection and release. Left unsaid, so far, is how traders' influence on price could be limited, though that appears to be the overall goal.

"You want steady prices, you don't want up and down prices because it's very difficult on the world economy," Chu told his Saudi audience.

The Saudis have repeatedly voiced concern about rapid changes in oil prices, acknowledging that OPEC no longer has the influence on oil prices it once did. Increasingly, that price is influenced by Wall Street.