Are speculators selling off oil stocks?

Floyd Norris in the has an article in the New York Times Business Section entitled "The Beginning of the End for High Oil Prices" in which he speculates:

Oil prices are up sharply (again) today. But stocks in oil companies are not.

...

It may be that the stock market is growing worried that high oil prices contain the seeds of their own destruction.

“At some point, it is likely to dawn on people who own oil shares that rising oil prices are raising global recession risks, and that a global recession would be really bad for oil companies,” said Robert Barbera, the chief economist of ITG.

which leads one of his commenters to remark:

Floyd, your observation is right on the money, the “financial players/traders” who have jacked up the oil prices beyond any logic, are getting out of the oil company shares first (being ahead of the curve), and soon will be unloading their futures contracts…..

Stay tuned!!!

Now I can't prove that speculation is causing the rise in energy prices - Paul Krugman doesn't think so:

Is speculation playing a role in high oil prices? It’s not out of the question. Economists were right to scoff at Mr. Masters — buying a futures contract doesn’t directly reduce the supply of oil to consumers — but under some circumstances, speculation in the oil futures market can indirectly raise prices, encouraging producers and other players to hoard oil rather than making it available for use.

Whether that’s happening now is a subject of highly technical dispute. (Readers who want to wonk themselves out can go to my blog, krugman.blogs.nytimes.com, and follow the links.) Suffice it to say that some economists, myself included, make much of the fact that the usual telltale signs of a speculative price boom are missing. But other economists argue, in effect, that absence of evidence isn’t solid evidence of absence.

This would normally make me positive they were, but a lot of other very smart people tell me the same thing (and honestly as mistaken as I think Krugman is in his politics there is no doubt he is a brilliant guy).

Others just say this is supply and demand playing out in the market. It's true that use in both India and China has surged in recent years, but that much? And is their increased use really exceeding supply. According to the oil companies and the Saudis the answer is no. They see an equilibrium price of about $55 a barrel.

Finally - these prices just feel wrong. Oil jumps 4% two days in a row with no real change in the world supply or demand? Come on.

So now back to the question I started out with? Are speculators dumping their stocks? I am not a financial analyst so this is probably not the right way to do this but I looked at the 5 year averages of 4 oil companies (Exxon, Chevron, Marathon, Conoco, BP and Shell) and while their stock prices are down over the last couple weeks it isn't by a lot and they are still essentially double what they were 4 years ago. So if there is a sell off it is going slow.

What does this mean? I don't know. All I know is that like I said something feels crooked about these prices. I still can't prove it but I know that George Soros is behind it and that as soon and Obama is elected prices will fall.