GS is not run by Peter Sutherland.  It's run by the same group of partners that have been in charge of the energy trading area since about 1993.  He doesn't even appear to sit as an outside director on the  main Board.

http://www2.goldmansachs.com/our-firm/about-us/leadership/board-of-directors.html

He's the titular head of the London office (Goldman Sachs International).  That's nothing like the seat of power in New York.  I doubt the energy desk ever sees the old boy.

Does that make the BP and Goldman relationship a "Conspiracy" ?

Well, that's what you appear to think I'm alleging.

Not exactly.  I find your writing on this subject to be a classic "conspiracy theorist" screed.  You can point to many links between the two, but no hard evidence of coordinated action.  When you constantly link two company names in works with titles such as "Oil Market manipulation", it's hard to believe you are not implying both illegal behavior and coordinated action.  I'll not put words in your mouth, but there's hardly any need.  You make it very clear you think they are working together.  

You also ignore the large number of other players in the game.  Do they dance  while your master manipulators call the tune?  Hardly.  The fact that both make money in the same market proves nothing.  All the long term players make money or they'd be gone.

I'll ask again.  If the BFO market is being rigged to high price levels, where is the oil going?  Why is no surplus being built up?  Is there no "peak oil" effect in play as this diary suggests?  What do you think the "real" or "fair" price of oil is?  Why are there no large differentials to the cash markets other than for super heavy sours?  Exactly how are the manipulators doing what they're doing?

As for your pointing to fiddling the settles on the screen markets.  Those work both to move the settles up and down around what the market might have been otherwise.  Players pricing in bbls try to move the market down.  Those selling, up.  There's no reason to jam prices high and keep them there.

For wet oil producers, sure they love high prices.  But even here you point out BP is structurally short.  Why would they wish flat prices to be high and stable?  They're killing their refining side for what reason?

We're at these levels because of:

1. political tension in a number of large producers - Nigeria, Iraq, Iran, Venz.  One real blow up and the world is actually short oil.

2. all slack in the production system is used up except perhaps some heavy sour Saudi

3. Demand growth in India/China/other Asia is relentless.  And will stay that way unless full price rises feed through rapidly.  Even then we'll just have hiccup for a while.  5% of the world's population (USA) uses 2-25% of the world's oil.  The rest want to move up from donkey carts.

4. Supply growth is screwed.  There are no more Saudi Arabia sized areas out there.  The Brazilian finds are large as was Sakhalin, but they're not changing the equation much.  Most large producers are in decline.

5.  End users refuse to cut back until there is so much pain they have to.  It's not easy or cheap to walk away from a gas guzzler or a building designed when energy was free (or when people just put up with being cold).