BP & Shell Fixed North Sea Oil Prices for a Decade, Trader Says
By IULIA FILIP | Courthouse News | May 28, 2013
WHITE PLAINS, N.Y. – 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.
Platts, a unit of McGraw Hill Financial, compiles and publishes Brent Crude oil prices for traders in the United States. Platts is not a party to the complaint.
“As major producers and market participants in the Brent Crude oil market, including contributors of Brent Crude oil prices to Platts, defendants had and continued to have market power and the ability to influence prices in the Brent Crude oil market,” the complaint states. “By purposefully reporting inaccurate, misleading and false Brent Crude oil trade information to Platts, defendants manipulated and restrained trade in both the physical (spot) Brent Crude oil market and the Brent Crude oil futures market.” (Parentheses in complaint.)
The European Commission confirmed this month that it is investigating several companies that may have reported distorted prices for crude oil and conspired to monopolize price-setting, according to the complaint.
“Almost immediately following the European Commission’s announcement on May 14, defendants BP plc, Royal Dutch Shell plc and Statoil ASA each confirmed they are the subject of the European Commission investigation,” the complaint states. “In particular, defendant Statoil confirmed that its office in Stavanger (Norway) was subject to an inspection by the EFTA Surveillance Authority, assisted by the Norwegian Competition Authority. Statoil acknowledged that the inspection was carried out at the request of the European Commission. Further, Statoil confirmed that the scope of the European Commission’s investigation is ‘related to the Platts’ market-on-close price assessment process, used to report prices in particular for crude oil, refined oil products and biofuels’ extending back to as early as 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.
It claims the defendants knew that misreporting crude oil prices to Platts would have a serious impact on the U.S. market for crude oil, refined oil products, biofuels and futures contracts.
“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.”
Prime International claims the defendants nonetheless continued “their deliberate and systematic submission of false Brent Crude oil trade information to Platts.”
It seeks class certification, an injunction, restitution, and damages for violations of the Commodity Exchange Act, the Sherman Act, and unjust enrichment.
Prime International is represented by Vincent Briganti with Lowey Dannenberg Cohen & Hart.
Iran oil ban to hit 10 main crude importers hardest
Press TV – March 10, 2012
The Business Insider news website says in an article that if the flow of Iran’s oil exports is disrupted, the main importers of the country’s crude will be hit hardest.
According to the article, main importers of Iran’s crude including China, India, Japan, South Korea, Turkey, Italy, Spain, Greece, South Africa and France will be adversely affected by any disruption in Tehran’s oil exports.
The article says when European Union (EU) sanctions are put into place on July 1, nearly 600,000 barrels of oil per day will come off the market as a result of which the price of Brent Crude would rise to about USD 138 per barrel.
If Iran’s crude exports are halted entirely as a result of an attack against the country, 2.5 million barrels per day of supply will be lost and Brent Crude prices will reach USD 205, the report adds.
Global oil prices have continually climbed this year following Iran’s move to cut oil sales to British and French firms in reaction to the EU’s anti-Iran embargos. Tehran has also announced it may halt oil exports to more European countries.
EU foreign ministers approved sanctions against Iran on January 23, including a ban on Iranian oil imports, a freeze on the assets of the country’s Central Bank within EU states and a ban on selling diamonds, gold, and other precious metals to Tehran.
The move is aimed at putting pressure on Iran to force the country into abandoning its nuclear energy program based on allegations that Tehran is seeking to weaponize its nuclear technology.
Iran has refuted the allegations, arguing that as a signatory to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and a member of the International Atomic Energy Agency, it has the right to develop and acquire nuclear technology for peaceful purposes.
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Revisionist History Books Banned by Amazon
By Michael Hoffman • Unz Review • August 25, 2018
On August 13, 2018 Amazon banned Judaism’s Strange Gods: Revised and Expanded, which was published in 2011 and sold by Amazon for the past seven years. Along with the much larger study, Judaism Discovered, (sold by Amazon since 2008), it has had an international impact both as a softcover volume as well as a digital book circulating on the Amazon Kindle.
Sales to India, Japan and the Middle East were rapidly growing. The digital Kindle format is particularly important for the free circulation of books because it bypasses borders and customs and hurdles over the prohibitive cost of shipping which the US Postal Service imposed on mail to overseas destinations several years ago (eliminating economical surface mail).
Amazon has also banned The Great Holocaust Trial: The Landmark Battle for the Right to Doubt the West’s Most Sacred Relic (sold by Amazon since 2010).
These volumes maintain a high standard of scholarly excellence, had a majority of favorable reviews by Amazon customers, are free of hatred and bigotry and have sold thousands of copies on Amazon. Out of the blue we were told that suddenly “Amazon KDP” discovered that the books are in violation of Amazon’s “content guidelines.” Asking for documentation of the charge results in no response. It is enough that the accusation has been tendered. The accused are guilty until proved innocent, although how proof of innocence is presented is anyone’s guess. There is no appeals process. This is what is known as “Tech Tyranny.”
There is a nationwide purge underway that amounts to a new McCarthyism — blacklisting and banning politically incorrect speech and history books under the rubric of “hate speech” accusations, initiated in part by two Zionist thought police organizations, the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) and the Anti-Defamation League (ADL). It’s a flimsy pretext for censoring controversial scholarly books that can’t be refuted.
In addition to our books being hate-free, we note that there are hundreds of hate-filled Zionist and rabbinic books brimming with ferocious bigotry for Palestinians, Germans and goyim in general, which are sold by Amazon. … continue
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