Energy majors BP and Shell are facing a court battle over allegations of oil price fixing.
A US commodity trading firm plans to sue the oil giants, together with Norwegian firm Statoil, following the launch of a Europe-wide investigation into claims the three companies “colluded in reporting distorted prices”.
Chicago-based Prime International Trading, which deals in crude oil and other commodities, has filed a proposed class-action lawsuit against the businesses accusing them of misreporting trades in North Sea Brent, the oil benchmark which sets the price of about 70% of the world’s crude.
The claim for civil damages follows European Commission raids on BP, Shell and Statoil offices last week.
The investigation is believed to be one of the biggest cross-border actions since banks were targeted over the interbank lending-rate rigging scandal.
Statoil said the suspected violations might have been going on for 11 years, in which time the oil price has more than quadrupled.
The commission said last week that even small distortions of assessed prices could have a huge impact on oil prices, potentially harming final consumers.
It said: “The commission has concerns that the companies may have colluded in reporting distorted prices to a price reporting agency to manipulate the published prices for a number of oil and biofuel products.”
Politicians have demanded jail terms for any oil chiefs found to be involved in price-fixing and called for motorists to get their money back through fuel duty cuts.
The European investigation follows a warning from a subsidiary of French energy giant Total over inaccurate pricing.
In October, Total Oil Trading told international regulators it came across estimates of market prices “that are out of line with our experience of the day” several times a year.
Shell, BP and Statoil declined to comment on Prime’s lawsuit yesterday. US accountancy professors have backed BP’s fight to rein in compensation it has to pay for the 2010 Gulf of Mexico spill, which is threatening to add billions of pounds to its growing bill for the disaster.
In a court document filed before BP’s one-day appeal hearing due on July 8, the professors said their motivation was to make sure accounting terms and principles were properly construed and applied when relied upon in judicial decisions.
Last month, the UK energy major lost its battle to convince Carl Barbier, the judge presiding over a complex set of legal proceedings in a New Orleans federal court, that the terms of the compensation settlement it reached in April 2012 were being misinterpreted by claimants.
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