Union finance minister P. Chidambaram did well to make it clear at the conference of oil producers and consumers in Jeddah that it was not the rising demand for oil in India and other developing countries that was contributing to the spiralling rise in crude prices. It is unfair to blame India's demand for crude oil as one of the reasons for the spike in crude prices. India's growth story is not a six-month-old story or even a one-year-old story. Crude prices have gone up by $140 a barrel in just a year, and by almost 40 per cent in the past six months. This reason for the spike, as Mr Chidambaram unequivocally spelt out for the first time, is "elsewhere... in the unregulated over-the-counter markets and futures trading in oil." His proposal for a price band mechanism to curb volatility and unpredictability in oil prices is interesting, but this would mean bringing the band within $100 a barrel because everything above that is due to the speculative bubble. India should put its weight alongside that of Saudi Arabia and other Opec countries to get to the bottom of the oil speculation scam which is creating havoc in the economies of the non-oil producing countries. Some analysts have pointed out that since the advent of oil futures, oil prices are no longer controlled by Opec but by Wall Street. It has shifted from the hands of producers to the hands of speculators. Saudi Arabia, under pressure from the United States, has said it would raise its production to 9.7 million barrels per day in July and for the rest of the year. This is not to say that India has no responsibility to manage its energy sector more efficiently. This sector is in the dumps, and hundreds of crores worth of expensive diesel is being used by industry because of power shortages. Thermal power stations are starved of coal in a country that has an abundance of coal. This all points to total mismanagement: in both power and coal. There is little accountability from the state sector: it is high time that if the ministers in question cannot perform they should be asked to go. The vital question of India's energy security is at stake. The government has failed even on the alternative energy front, as well as in conservation. At a time when it is under fire from all quarters for its failure to effectively tackle inflation, it would be to the advantage of the government to at least show that it is doing something substantive to tackle the energy crisis.