When it comes to oil prices, there are many things the U.S. can’t control – the weather and political instability in the Middle East and South America, for example. That’s why it is wise for Congress to look at areas the U.S. can affect and ensure that policies aren’t driving oil prices even higher.

The Strategic Petroleum Reserve may be one such area. At a congressional hearing last week, Philip Verleger, an oil economist, told lawmakers that neither international events, growing demand nor a global shortage were responsible for a rapid rise in oil prices that began in August. The one significant change Mr. Verleger saw this year was the Department of Energy’s decision to restart delivery of oil to the country’s Strategic Petroleum Reserve, he told a subcommittee of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs. Purchases for the reserve were suspended by President Bush in April 2006 to boost supplies of gasoline. This August, the Energy Department resumed deliveries, with more than 5 million barrels of oil acquired through November.

In 2005, in response to concerns that the Energy Department was buying oil when prices were high and supplies were tight, Sens. Susan Collins and Carl Levin authored an amendment to the energy bill that put restrictions on purchases for the reserve. Under the law, the Energy Department must “avoid incurring excessive cost or appreciably affecting the price of petroleum products to consumers.”

Sen. Collins wonders if the department is fulfilling this requirement, especially since the department has not asked its Energy Information Administration to do an analysis of price and supply.

“There is no compelling national security reason to make purchases now,” she said recently. Plus, she added, “buying when the price is high does not make any sense.”

The Department of Energy would have saved taxpayers nearly $590 million from October 2001 to August 2005 if it had deferred deliveries of oil to the reserve when prices were high, the Government Accountability Office found last year. The monthly savings would be even higher now with record high oil prices.

“Even if it’s only a 2 percent impact on price, a 2 percent decrease would help,” Sen. Collins said of gasoline prices.

Another witness at the same Senate hearing said that market speculation was largely responsible for the rise in oil prices. Fadel Gheit, senior oil analyst with Oppenheimer & Co., said he believed oil prices were inflated 100 percent as a result of excessive speculation.

The Senate has included language in a farm bill that would give the Commodity Futures Trading Commission more authority to oversee electronic energy transactions. The measure, sponsored by Sen. Olympia Snowe, would require more reporting and gives the commission more authority to track transactions.

This, and suspending purchases for the strategic petroleum reserve, are worth a closer look.