Oil Traders Spared as EU Commission Drops Price-Rigging Probe
- BP, Shell and Statoil no longer focus of EU Investigation
- EU to focus on potential manipulation of ethanol market
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The European Commission dropped an investigation into the potential manipulation of oil price benchmarks, signaling crude producers and their trading arms won’t face fines like those that roiled banks accused of rigging currency markets and lending rates.
The trading units of Royal Dutch Shell Plc, BP Plc and Statoil ASA, whose offices were raided in May, 2013, are no longer under investigation nor is the commission currently probing “behaviors in price benchmarks for the crude oil sector,” Ricardo Cardoso, a spokesman for the European Union’s antitrust authority, said by e-mail.