BP & Shell Fixed North Sea Oil Prices for a Decade, Trader Says
WHITE PLAINS, N.Y. (CN) - BP, Shell and Statoil fixed North Sea crude oil prices and restricted trade for years by misleading reporting agencies, a trader claims in a federal class action.Lead plaintiff Prime International Trading sued BP, Royal Dutch Shell and Norwegian oil company Statoil, in Federal Court.
Chicago-based Prime International is a member of the Chicago Board of Trade, Chicago Mercantile Exchange, NYMEX (the New York Mercantile Exchange) and ICE (the Intercontinental Exchange), the world's largest energy futures exchanges. Prime claims the defendants and unnamed co-conspirators deliberately reported inaccurate information about North Sea sweet light crude oil (a commodity known as Brent Crude oil) to Platts, the leading reporting agency for the Brent Crude Oil commodity and futures contracts traded on NYMEX and ICE, undermining the entire pricing structure for the Brent Crude oil market since 2002.
"On May 17, 2013, the U.K. Serious Fraud Office announced that it was 'urgently reviewing' the European Commission's allegations of price-fixing in the oil markets and determining whether to accept the case for 'criminal investigation.' That same day, the United States Senate called for the U.S. Department of Justice to join the European Commission investigation."
Prime International claims it traded hundreds of thousands of Brent Crude futures contracts at prices manipulated by the defendants' price-fixing. It claims to represent thousands of traders who have been misled by the manipulated prices since 2002."The Brent oilfields in the North Sea currently have the highest physical daily output of any of the world's recognized oil benchmarks," the complaint states. "Brent is the leading global price benchmark for Atlantic basin crude oils and it is used to price two-thirds of the world's internationally traded crude oil supplies."
more here at link..this had a serious impact on the U.S. market http://www.cnsenvironmentallaw.com/2013/05/28/1900.htm
