The Wall Street Journal’s Justin Scheck and Jenny Gross have done a nice job laying out how oil traders can manipulate prices. The EU has has been investigating the trading arms of some large oil companies, including Norway’s Statoil, in an effort to determine whether energy traders are doing just that. [Wall Street Journal]

On the upside for Statoil, the company announced an oil discovery offshore Newfoundland near the Mizzen discovery, which could hold 100-200 million barrels of oil. [Statoil]

But oil was worth slightly less by the end of yesterday following Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke’s public comments that the Fed might reduce its asset purchases in the second half of the year. [Reuters]