Prosecutors are investigating individual traders who send deal prices to Platts’ price assessments for oil and other energy benchmarks
Washington — The US department of justice is investigating suspected manipulation of energy pricing benchmarks published by S&P Global Platts, expanding the agency’s crackdown on misconduct in the global commodities market, according to four people familiar with the matter.
Over the past year, US authorities have brought two cases of alleged manipulation of Platts’ oil benchmarks by traders at two different companies, but prosecutors are now probing similar behaviour across the market, the sources said. Platts publishes its assessment methodology which includes controls to ensure data integrity, such as appointing an independent external auditor “to review and report on its adherence to this stated methodology”, according to its website.
While US criminal authorities pursued cases against energy traders in the 2000s related to benchmark-rigging, in the years that followed commodities market manipulation was largely the domain of civil agencies including the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.
But the unit now has the tools and expertise to dig into other areas of the market, including industry benchmarks operated by price reporting agencies, said one of the sources. In March, a former oil trader for Glencore pleaded guilty to charges that he conspired to manipulate the Platts benchmark for a type of oil.