TotalEnergies to pay $5 MM to settle U.S. FERC natgas manipulation case
A unit of French energy company TotalEnergies has agreed to pay $5 MM to settle claims by U.S. energy regulators that it and some of its traders allegedly manipulated the natural gas market in 2009–2012.
The settlement is much smaller than the $214 MM the U.S. Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) had sought from TotalEnergies' Total Energies Gas & Power North America unit and some of its traders.
To fully resolve the claims and allegations, the TotalEnergies unit agreed to pay $5 MM in restitution to certain agreed-upon non-governmental organizations, FERC said in an order on Wednesday.
The order was neither an admission of liability by the TotalEnergies' unit nor a concession by FERC Enforcement that its claims are not well-founded, FERC said.
Officials from TotalEnergies were not immediately available for comment.
In 2015, FERC alleged the TotalEnergies' unit made intentionally losing trades—known as "uneconomic" trading—to affect index prices in the U.S. Southwest on at least 38 occasions between June 2009 and June 2012. Those losses would be offset by larger gains on other related positions, FERC said.
It was one of a series of so-called loss leader, or leveraged trading strategies, that FERC has pursued over the past couple of decades in which traders lose money in one market to benefit larger positions in a benchmark or other financial index.
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