Practices employed by New York oil traders are being scrutinized to determine if they’re unfairly influencing prices.

The New England Fuel Institute, a trade association with more than 1,100 members, is taking a lead position in analyzing the way New York Mercantile Exchange traders operate. The Maine Oil Dealers Association is backing the effort, as are attorneys general representing New York and Connecticut, said Jaimie Py, MODA’s president.

Regarding Nymex practices, “It’s very hard to connect the dots,” Py said Monday afternoon. He said the analysis that’s under way is intended “to determine if excess speculation is affecting market prices.”

Trading on the Nymex in October drove the price of a 42-gallon barrel of crude oil beyond the $55 mark before bids began falling late last week. During that same month, the price of No. 2 oil used to heat about 80 percent of Maine’s homes rose by 29 cents per gallon, to just shy of the $2 per gallon mark. It topped that price in this week’s statewide survey.

Py said the NEFI is expected to issue a report on its findings within two weeks. He briefed Maine state government officials, including representatives of the Attorney General’s Office, on the analysis during a meeting last week.

“I’m not trying to suggest any wrongdoing,” Py said, but he noted there are myriad questions about the recent run-up in oil prices.

“Is $25 a fair war premium?” he asked. “Who determines if it is, or is there something else going on?”

Py said the NEFI study will also seek to determine why oil prices “rose so quickly, so high, so fast.”

The examination of Nymex trading practices could also determine if “controls to limit volatility” are needed, Py said.

An overheated market in 1989 was slowed through a halt to trading for a day, he recalled. He said a change in policies might have a similar result this year.

Jack Sullivan, NEFI’s executive director, said he’s attempting to set up a meeting on trading practices in the next 10 days. “We want to sit down with Nymex officials and discuss this at great length and get a response,” Sullivan said by telephone from his Watertown, Mass., office.

He said the exchange “could make it more difficult to speculate” on oil commodities. That, in turn, could reduce prices.

“The net effect is that fuel oil is just too expensive,” said Sullivan. “It just doesn’t make sense.”

Nachamah Jacobovits, who handles media inquiries for Nymex, was in Dublin, Ireland, on Monday as the exchange opened an office there to initiate European Brent crude oil trading. The commodity closed at $46.95 per barrel for January delivery.

No one else else at the exchange was authorized to discuss NEFI’s concerns, the Sun Journal was told by telephone.

Neither Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal nor New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer could be reached Monday evening for comment.

Py and Sullivan each said their members – mostly oil dealers – are being squeezed by the high prices being negotiated by Nymex traders. That, in turn, is hitting home with consumers who find themselves paying prices 70 cents higher per gallon than they did a year ago.

“They’re suffering just like everyone else in this crazy market,” Py said of Maine dealers.

The Nymex traders bid on oil that’s on the way to the United States for future delivery. The oil comes from all around the globe, from Arab nations to African states, from West Texas to oil fields in the Atlantic off the coast of Great Britain. Delivery dates could be a month or several months away, depending on the contract.

Traders and other oil experts have said the rising prices reflect a growing global demand linked to economic prosperity in China, instability resulting from war or insurrection in oil-producing nations, and natural disasters such as hurricanes.