ALAMEDA, Calif., Sept. 26 /PRNewswire/ -- United States Commodity Funds LLC ('USCF'), the General Partner and manager of United States Oil Fund, LP ('USO'), United States Natural Gas Fund, LP ('UNG'), United States 12 Month Oil Fund, LP ('USL'), United States Gasoline Fund, LP ('UGA') and United States Heating Oil Fund, LP ('UHN') (together, the 'Funds'), today responded to recent comments made in media reports on the topic of credit risk and commodity based exchange traded securities and ETFs. Such reports mentioned that some commodity-based exchange traded securities make use of various non-exchange traded commodity related derivatives, such as swaps, to provide the fund's economic exposure to its underlying commodity or commodities. The reports further raise the issue that such non-listed investments raise the potential for counter-party risk on the part of the commodity funds if the other participant in the swap were to be unable to perform as required by the terms of the swap. With the recent disruption in the financial markets, the General Partner feels that some investors might incorrectly draw conclusions from the articles about the credit risks involved in the Funds managed by USCF.

One article correctly mentions that a particular USCF fund, USO, can make use of not only listed exchange-traded futures contracts, but also a wide range of alternative oil related investments, including swaps. However, it may appear from the article that USO actually does make use of non-exchange traded investments at the present time. This is not true and may be a source of confusion and unnecessary concern on the part of investors.

Every day, the Funds mentioned above publish a list of their portfolio's investments as of the end of each day on their websites and investors may review the current holdings. At the present time, except as noted below, all of the Funds mentioned above only have exchange-traded futures contracts as their sole commodity related investment. Currently all of the commodity exposure for each of the Funds is in the form of commodity futures contracts listed on the New York Mercantile Exchange ('NYMEX'). In addition, a review of the quarterly filings for all of the Funds would show that each fund, since its inception, has relied exclusively on exchange-traded commodity futures to obtain its particular commodity exposure.

USCF cautions that although each Fund has exclusively relied on exchange-traded commodity futures in the past, the prospectuses of each of the Funds do permit the use of other investments and may make use of such alternatives in the future.