Subpoened: US supermajor ConocoPhillips
ConocoPhillips ‘facing oil trading probe’
US supermajor ConocoPhillips said today it was subpoenaed last December by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) as part of the agency's six-month investigation into manipulation of the oil market.
"ConocoPhillips has been and will be fully co-operating with the CFTC and any other governmental agency involved in this probe," said company spokesman Bill Graham.
Speaking to the Reuters Global Energy Summit earlier today, Jim Gallogly, executive vice president of ConocoPhillips' downstream activities, said he was unaware if the CFTC was looking at the company as part of its broad investigation.
But Graham clarified later that ConocoPhillips was subpoenaed by the CFTC on 3 December.
Gallogly said that investigations of the oil industry are nothing new. "I believe we're continuously reviewed (by the government) and I think the record speaks for itself. They have not found any collusive behavior in the past. I don't expect them to find collusive behavior in the future."
He added, "As an industry, I believe we all perform in a very ethical manner."
The CFTC investigation is looking at oil purchases along with storage and transportation.
Gallogly said it would be difficult to manipulate petroleum prices or supplies through shipping and transportation.
"I suppose if somebody were to go out - and I'm completely speculating - and try to corner the market in shipping. But that's very difficult to do, given the number of competitors," he said. "So, I just don't see that being something that would be going on."
Separately, he said gasoline supplies would not be tighter this autumn because refiners were boosting their output of more profitable diesel fuel. "At this point, we don't see that," he said.
Gallogly said ConocoPhillips' refineries had plenty of crude supplies to make diesel, gasoline and other petroleum products and the company did not need any oil from the government's Strategic Petroleum Reserve.
Some US lawmakers are pushing the Bush administration to sell oil from the emergency stockpile in order to get more supplies in the market and help lower prices.
"We don't need it at this point and time," Gallogly said of oil supplies from the reserve.
US Deputy Energy Secretary Jeff Kupfer told the Reuters Global Energy Summit he saw no need to release oil from the stockpile, repeating the administration's long-standing position that the reserve should be used only during a significant supply disruption.