A little over a month ago, I wrote here about the debate on oil speculation.

One of the commenters on S. 3268, The Stop Excessive Energy Speculation Act of 2008 had pointed to a Web site called Stop Oil Speculation Now. I speculated (ahem) that this commenter might be a spinmeister for that campaign.

Whatever the case, now there’s a Web site on the other side. The Airline Oil Spin is its name, and it says:

The U.S. Airline Industry is wracked with problems. And the airline industry is working hard to pin all of those problems on “oil speculators,” by creating pseudo-grassroots campaigns like their recent effort to push legislation to stop some kinds of oil speculation.

The airlines “are currently engaged in the buying and selling of ‘paper contracts’ for jet fuel through their extensive fuel hedging programs,” this site says. Airlines are speculators themselves.

Now, The Airline Oil Spin links to a site called How Was Your Flight? that highlights problems with the airlines. How Was Your Flight? is a project of the Reaching Higher Coalition, which is “a coalition of community groups, clergy, elected leaders, and airport workers represented by Service Employees International Union (SEIU) United Service Workers West.”

Well, we have quite a selection of Web sites to root through, and we’re better off for having them, even if they’re all trying to spin us. Through the spin and counter-spin, we’ll learn a little bit and be in a better position to decide what we think.

I, for one, remain convinced that “oil speculation” is a bugaboo that we really shouldn’t be worried by. Buying and selling of futures contracts in commodities like oil helps to spread risk and smooth out supply and demand. Fast recent rises in the price of oil reflect uncertainty about where oil is going to come from, uncertainty caused by war and political instability in places like Iraq and Venezuela. And it’s caused by increasing consumption in countries with growing economies like China and India. Going after “speculators” is sort of shooting the messenger. (This is an opinion I concealed oh-so-cleverly in my earlier post.)

The debate continues. Here’s the vote on S. 3268, The Stop Excessive Energy Speculation Act of 2008. Click to vote, comment, learn more, or edit the wiki article about the bill.