Natural Gas Futures Trader Files Complaint Against Energy Transfer Partners

Michael Giberson

Energy Transfer Partners, the Texas-based company already the target of FERC and CFTC action for allegedly manipulating natural gas markets, is now the target of a private lawsuit for damages asserted to have resulted from ETP’s former trading practices.

According to Platts:

[The] suit, filed with the US District Court for the Southern District of New York, charges that ETP manipulated gas futures prices by selling “massive amounts of fixed price gas for prompt month delivery at artificially low, non-competitive prices at major natural gas trading hubs,” and intentionally submitting the artificial trades to index publishers, including Inside FERC’s Gas Market Report, a Platts publication.

… As a direct, proximate and foreseeable result of [ETP’s] unlawful conduct, the prices of NYMEX natural gas futures and options contracts were manipulated to artificial levels” from December 29, 2003, to December 31, 2005, according to the complaint. Moreover, the trader and all others who traded the contracts for that period “have suffered damages,” the complaint
said.

The ETP allegations were discussed here on July 27 (scroll down be the Amaranth discussion) and also last October 19.