John Hyland, the chief investment officer for an exchange-traded funds sponsor at the center of an ongoing debate over increased regulations of commodities futures markets, gave his unvarnished viewpoint to regulators on Wednesday.

In a public meeting before the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, Hyland presented a prepared speech to commission members about the role of the firm he works for, United States Commodity Funds LLC, and its ETFs.

In particular, he noted that a combined 325,000 investors were putting their money into two of its most popular funds—the U.S. Oil Fund (NYSEArca: USO) and the U.S. Natural Gas Fund (NYSEArca: UNG) at the end of last year.

In a transcript of Hyland's prepared speech provided to IndexUniverse.com just before it was scheduled to be presented, the CIO estimated that between 75-90% of the firm's entire lineup of commodity ETFs comprised shareholders who "could be deemed to be individual, retail investors, i.e., not institutions or investment funds."

He added: "Management further believes that the shareholdings in the funds tend to be very widely held. Based on the absence of SEC required 13G and 13F filings, no investor, to the funds’ knowledge, currently holds more than 5% of the units outstanding of any fund."

Hyland also addressed charges that USO and UNG have been causing artificial price movements—both up and down—in their underlying markets due to their popularity.

"Many of the articles published on this topic have stated that USO’s large size, and the fact that it was the first publicly offered exchange traded vehicle that offered exposure to crude oil futures, made it a key factor in the rapid rise of crude oil prices in 2008. Furthermore, several articles continue to make such claims for market activity continuing into 2009," he related in the speech.

"However, the management of USO believes that readily available information from USO’s website and other widely available financial news and data sources indicate that many or most of these claims lack merit."

Hyland then presented a series of charts and other data to support his views. You can read the complete transcript, with accompanying charts and data, of his presentation in IndexUniverse.com's research section here.)