Florida will receive $2.275 million from a Morgan Stanley subsidiary after reaching a price-gouging settlement with the gas supplier, Attorney General Bill McCollum and Agriculture Commissioner Charles Bronson said today.

The state opened its investigation after thousands of complaints about gas prices during Hurricane Ike in 2008. The state says that TransMontaigne ordered its retailers to increase gas an additional $1.60 per gallon during the storm.

The settlement marks the first time the state has gone after a supplier. It’s also the largest price gouging settlement in Florida history, McCollum said.

Read the settlement here.

U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson is backing President Barack Obama’s efforts to stop oil “speculators” from driving up gas prices but doesn’t want him to stop there.

Federal regulators are considering curbing the sales of energy futures by investors and are trying to shed light on swapping of contracts outside by hedge fund managers and traders.

The administration should go further and return the law to pre-Enron era that left a “loophole,” Nelson wrote to in a letter to Obama today.

“We shouldn’t be allowing profiteers to flip oil contracts like condominiums,” he wrote.

Nelson’s filed a bill to close the loophole and require that all energy futures be traded on regulated exchanges like the New York Mercantile Exchange.