Oil rigging: Traders accuse BP and Shell of fixing prices

Published time: November 06, 2013 14:24
Edited time: November 06, 2013 18:53

Get short URL

Reuters/Ismail Zitouny

 

A new law suit claims some of the world’s largest oil companies – including BP, Royal Dutch Shell, manipulated Brent Crude spot prices in collaboration with Morgan Stanley, Vitol Group, and other energy traders.

The plaintiffs accuse the companies of deliberately submitting false and misleading information about Brent prices to Platts, the energy and oil market news outlet, which is used by traders worldwide in daily transactions, Bloomberg reports.

“By providing false or inaccurate information and engaging in false or sham trading, defendants undermined the entire pricing structure for the Brent Crude Oil physical and futures markets,” the plaintiffs allege.

By fixing the North Sea oil benchmark, the oil companies and traders, not only manipulated the oil market, but petroleum, food, and other products that look to Brent as a guide for buying and selling across world exchanges.

Four traders – John Devivo, Robert Michiels, Anthony Insinga and Kevin McDonnell – filed the class act in a Manhattan court in New York on October 4.

Other companies accused of ‘fixing’ are Trafigura AG and Trafigura Beheer British Virgin Island, Dutch commodity trading firms, Phibro Trading LLC, a subsidiary of Occidental Petroleum Corporation, Vitol Group, a Swiss-based, Dutch-owned energy trader, S.A., and other unnamed traders.

Read More Here

Related articles

• Brent Crude Traders Claim Proof BFOE Boys Rigged Market – Bloomberg
• BP and Shell face new allegations of rigging oil prices in US lawsuit
• Oil traders have proof BP, Shell fix crude prices, they say in lawsuit
• Oil traders claim crude prices fixed
• Move Over FX And Libor, As Manipulation And “Banging The Close” Comes To Commodities And Interest Rate Swaps
• News & World Events – Oil traders claim crude prices fixed
• Crude Rebounds From Five-Month Low as Fuel Supplies Drop – Bloomberg

European Commission regulators yesterday raided the offices of oil companies in London, the Netherlands and Norway

Everything Is Rigged, Continued: European Commission Raids Oil Companies in Price-Fixing Probe

 

By Matt Taibbi

POSTED: May 15, 12:05 PM ET

 

 

e’re going to get into this more at a later date, but there was some interesting late-breaking news yesterday.

 

According to numerous reports, the European Commission regulators yesterday raided the offices of oil companies in London, the Netherlands and Norway as part of an investigation into possible price-rigging in the oil markets. The targeted companies include BP, Shell and the Norweigan company Statoil. The Guardian explains that officials believe that oil companies colluded to manipulate pricing data:

 

The commission said the alleged price collusion, which may have been going on since 2002, could have had a “huge impact” on the price of petrol at the pumps “potentially harming final consumers”.

Lord Oakeshott, former Liberal Democrat Treasury spokesman, said the alleged rigging of oil prices was “as serious as rigging Libor” – which led to banks being fined hundreds of millions of pounds.

 

The inquiry also involves Platts, the world’s largest oil price reporting agency. The concept here is very similar to both the LIBOR scandal, which involved banks manipulating the benchmark rates for interest rates, and to the possible rigging of interest rate swap prices through the manipulation of ISDAfix, the benchmark rate for those instruments, which is also the subject of a regulatory probe.

 

We wrote about both of those scandals in last month’s Rolling Stone article, “Everything is Rigged.” In that piece, finance professionals talked about the potential for manipulation in other markets that involve voluntary price reporting:

What other markets out there carry the same potential for manipulation? The answer to that question is far from reassuring, because the potential is almost everywhere. From gold to gas to swaps to interest rates, prices all over the world are dependent upon little private cabals of cigar-chomping insiders we’re forced to trust.

 

Read Full Article Here

Related articles

• Oil Companies Raided in Price-Fixing Probe (news.firedoglake.com)
• BP and Shell raided for rigging prices for more than a decade (sott.net)
• Matt Taibbi ~ Everything Is Rigged, Continued: European Commission Raids Oil Companies In Price-Fixing Probe (shiftfrequency.com)
• Everything is rigged, continued: European Commission raids oil companies in price-fixing probe (sott.net)
• Top News: BP and Shell raided in oil price-rigging investigation (guardian.co.uk)
• FOCUS | Everything Is Rigged, Continued: Oil Companies Raided (readersupportednews.org)
• !!!!! Everything Is Rigged, Continued: Oil Companies Raided – by Matt Taibbi, May 17, 2013 (jhaines6.wordpress.com)
• Oil companies raided in EU probe (bbc.co.uk)
• Everything Is Rigged: European Commission Raids Oil Companies in Price-Fixing Probe (counterinformation.wordpress.com)
• Everything Is Rigged, Continued: European Commission Raids Oil Companies in Price-Fixing Probe (silveristhenew.com)