WASHINGTON - Sen. Olympia Snowe on Thursday pushed government regulators to investigate whether speculative purchases of energy commodities on foreign exchanges have contributed to the rising price of oil.

Congress is scrambling to curb the rising price of gasoline and heating oil, but partisan gridlock has stalled the legislative progress. Now, a plan to require a government agency to crack down on a foreign energy exchange is gaining bipartisan support.

“We have to do everything possible and take every conceivable step that is within our tool box on a regulatory and Congressional basis to ensure that these energy prices are not subject to excessive manipulation and speculation,” Snowe told reporters.

Snowe and Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., asked the Commodities Futures Trading Commission to regulate the British-owned, but U.S.- based InterContinental Exchange the same way it regulates U.S exchanges.

They added that they would work to pass legislation to compel the agency to act if the agency did not act voluntarily.

“It is the foremost obligation to prevent speculators from dominating markets and the classic control on that is to limit the participation of speculators,” said Michael Greenberger, a former government regulator. “The CFTC has the right, this afternoon, to pick up the phone to ask (for) the real parties and interests who are trading.”

The British exchange currently is exempt from U.S. regulation, but the U.S. law requires the exchange to provide the names of traders and the dollar amount of their trades to the CFTC.

“We are asking the CFTC to force ICE to name names,” Cantwell told reporters.

Meanwhile, Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee chairman Joseph Lieberman, I-Conn., and Sen. Susan Collins, the panel’s top Republican, held a hearing last month to explore whether Wall Street banks, hedge funds and university endowment funds have contributed to rising energy prices. They have begun investing in commodity markets at record levels to broaden their portfolios.

Lieberman said last week he would hold another hearing on June 24 to ask the CFTC whether legislation is needed to limit the number of participants in these markets.

Rep. Tom Allen, a Democrat, asked government agencies in April to investigate whether “the same mixture of corporate greed combined with negligent regulation,” which led to the California energy crisis in 2000 and 2001, is “wreaking havoc on the economy today.”