Oil exec and Trump ally Hamm seeks U.S. probe of oil price crash

Oil exec and Trump ally Hamm seeks U.S. probe of oil price crash

President Donald Trump, is pressing the U.S. commodity markets regulator and the exchange to probe whether market manipulation or system failure was behind this week's unprecedented plunge in U.S. crude futures.. Commodity Futures Trading Commission asking the regulator to probe whether "potential market manipulation, failed systems or computer programming failures" was behind Monday's price crash, which took U.S. oil futures into negative territory for the first time.. U.S. crude futures for May delivery plunged below zero on Monday, with desperate traders at one point paying customers some $40 a barrel to take oil so they would not have to accept delivery on an expiring futures contract.. Continental Resources, which Hamm founded in 1967, is highly exposed to the oil market rout because the North Dakota shale producer had not hedged its production heading into this year's historic rout, Reuters reported last month..