Brian Hunter, as some of you may remember, was a trader in natural gas and oil for an investment firm named Amaranth. Due to certain reckless Hunter trades, Amaranth melted down in 2005-06, and caused a good deal of volatility in the oil and gas derivatives markets in the process. Why am I interested in this? I covered it at the time, as a reporter for Reuters, but it was one of many things I covered back in the day and I'm sure I've forgotten many of them. One reason that this is on my mind is the coincidental significance of the year 2006 in a very different corner of the oil and gas world, the executive suites of Exxon-Mobil. That was the year one Rex Tillerson, a future Secretary of State, became the CEO of that company. The two companies, Amaranth, and Exxon-Mobil, have almost nothing in common except that they both have or had something to do with oil and gas. But Exxon is a vertically integrated firm that pumps the stuff out of the ground, provides ...