This paper investigates threshold cointegration and dynamics of New York Mercantile Exchange (NYMEX) crude oil futures volatility and speculation in the framework of a threshold vector error correction model (TVECM). Two regimes are determined by the model and divided into the usual and unusual regime. We use the ratio of volume over open interest as speculation variable while we consider two volatilities measures, absolute return and high-low volatilities. Our findings present different and strong asymmetric error correction effects of volatility and speculation in the speed of adjustment to the long-run equilibrium in two regimes. In addition of speculation leading volatility based on former measure, speculation following volatility is found in the usual regime, suggesting relative market efficient. Bidirectional causalities of speculation and different volatilities measures in the unusual regime suggest that market instability mitigated in the unusual regime. In sum, crude oil futures markets seem to work well with the existence of threshold cointegration.