Total Unit Fined $48 Million for Attempted Market Manipulation

(Bloomberg) -- A trading unit of TotalEnergies SE, the French oil major, was fined $48 million by the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission over allegations that the firm attempted to manipulate gasoline markets.

TOTSA TotalEnergies Trading SA attempted to manipulate futures contracts linked to a fuel used primarily in Europe, known as EBOB, the CFTC said late on Tuesday.

Total didn’t immediately respond to request for comment made outside of the company’s normal business hours.

The case is the latest in fines being slapped against energy and commodity traders. In June, Trafigura Group agreed to pay $55 million to settle allegations from the CFTC that it manipulated a fuel oil benchmark and blocked employees from cooperating with regulators. And earlier this month, years of legal probes against Glencore Plc wrapped up with the company ordered to pay $152 million.

The TotalEnergies case involves the unit’s alleged efforts in 2018 to benefit from a short position in EBOB-linked futures by selling large quantities of the physical EBOB fuel at lower prices than buyers indicated they would pay.

“Essentially, TOTSA’s traders were willing to accept less revenue from the company’s sales of physical EBOB, in an attempt to depress the reported price of EBOB, and increase TOTSA’s overall trading profits (by boosting the value of the company’s EBOB-linked short position),” the CFTC statement said.

While TOTSA provided some cooperation during the probe, the firm didn’t timely produce certain WhatsApp communications that were requested or adequately preserve these communications following the request, “with the result that potentially relevant evidence was unavailable,” the CFTC said.