Everybody manipulates prices, especially OPEC. They can certainly stand some competition.
Besides, it's not price manipulation, it promotes price stability. It's stabilising the price by removing temporary upsets that SEPEULATORS use to FLEECE CONSUMERS when they jump in to bid up the price for every opportunistic reason they can imagine. Speculators manipulate the market as well, with their buy and short selling orders and price stops. What other reason is there that causes anything to change prices so much in a matter of milliseconds. Its not supply and demand. Its some computer getting in a buy order a few milliseconds before the refineries order gets to the floor.
In any case, a few hundred million barrels are not going to change the long term price direction of yearly production variations, nor the day oil runs out or fusion power gets plugged in. If oil gets scarce, it's price will rise, more plentiful, price will decrease. Let that happen on its own. No, we don't need Speculators upping the price because some hurricane is on the way, or if some pipeline is leaking today, causing panic for a week until it gets fixed. Producers capping their wells when the price gets too low is also a form of attempted manipulation, just as the Saudis lower the price when they're all open, just not lowering it too much so as to not kill that golden goose, just keep it kicking while they strangle both the goose and the consumer.
Refineries use futures prices to eliminate uncertainty in price AND CREATE A STABLE profit margin, eliminating their risk of gasoline and diesel price variations happening while they do their refining. The consumers will know what gasoline will cost and can budget for it. Speculators use futures to profit by accepting that risk. The other way to do this is to eliminate all risk. Refineries and consumers won't have to worry about it and the speculators can speculate on other things more deserving of their attention, like tulips, Trump's action figure NFTs and Bitcoins.
Stable markets create stable societies, but there is no great opportunity to make money without working for it in the old traditional way, like exploration, drilling more wells, building pipelines and refineries, selling products so others can do the same with the stable cost of energy they need to do that. Some just prefer to be opportunistic with their money and play the shortages and chaotic price swings, which they themselves add to the chaos by bidding up prices until they collapse anyway, rather than invest it and build a stable, solid future. Who says oil prices need to be $-28 one day and $150 the next? How about we just hold $75 for awhile ... and nobody gets hurt.
Einstein gave the same test to students every year. When asked why he would do something like that, "Because the answers had changed."
