BP oil trading comes under scrutiny

Anchorage daily News ^ | May 4th, 2008 | LES BLUMENTHAL

[BlueMoose]

FEDS: Did giant try to manipulate market for crude in 2000?

[BlueMoose]

I have been told that Alaska's North Slope was NOT being exported to Asia.

[IronJack]

Headline: Oil Companies Gouge Consumers

In Other News: Sun Rises in East
"Water is wet" Says Expert
Francisco Franco Still Dead

[am452]

bump for later reading

[am452]

WASHINGTON -- Eight years ago, Federal Trade Commission investigators believed that BP occasionally exported oil from Alaska's North Slope to Asia in an effort to drive up spot crude oil prices on the West Coast.

What's this johnny??? It can't be. A oil company would never do this. LOL

(Whenever a freeper mentions oil companies maybe up to shenanignas the resident pro oil company can never do anything wrong mouth piece, mnjohnnie, call them ignorant )

[G.Mason]

" ... Now the commission has issued a 39-page document citing the BP trading and other examples and asking for public comment on whether such activity represents the type of "market manipulation" in the oil industry that Congress has given it broad new powers to investigate ... "

I give up ...

I'm gonna find a cave in the woods, and start eating bugs & berries.

ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒE

[blueyon]

Since Bush is coming under fire for the oil companies doings right now then it is only fair to ask..WHO WAS PRESIDENT IN 2000? DUH

[RightWhale]

If BP somehow shipped some oil from Prudhoe to Asia when they were not allowed to do that, they must have done some amazing things like made an oil tanker invisible like the Philadelphia Experiment.

[BlueMoose]

Ah but they are not shipping to asia.

[RightWhale]

Not from Prudhoe, not for many years.

[budwiesest]

You forgot to add, “Grasshoppa”.

[BlueMoose]

And not from kenai ?

How did the FTC get such an idea.

[BlueMoose]

“``Lots of government bodies’’ have looked ``very hard’’ for evidence of manipulation or price gouging and ``they’ve generally had a tough time finding it,’’ Keith Hennessey, director of the National Economic Council, told Bloomberg Television today. ``What they’ve found is that these markets tend to be competitive.’’ “

Well i just don’t know.

[RightWhale]

Don’t know about Kenai. Probably entirely different legal regime.

[BlueMoose]

Ok I see this is from the DU. Kerry Cantwell.

[weezel]

Methane is more abundant on earth then oil. Why we don’t use it instead of trying to make fuel out of corn is beyond me.

http://www.truehealth.org/methane.html

[ASOC]

THey have been shiping gas out of Kenai for years.

ANd fettilized made from natural gas.

It’s called export trade and helps to offset the trade deficiet.

I’m just pi**ed because to ‘help’ me use less gas, the local owner raised my rates 45% in two years....

[Thebaddog]

How would someone track insider trading and churning commodities to raise prices? Say if a turd like Soros would want to cripple the American economy to raise the misery and point the voters towards a "Workers Paradise" candidate, could it be traced that he sold contracts between two entities he controls?

I smell turds in all this, or is it methane?

[RightWhale]

We have natural gas in Fairbanks if not entirely inside city limits. It is trucked as LNG in from Kenai. Have no idea what the cost might be, but we’re about ten miles from the end of the pipe so it isn’t an actual matter of concern right now.

[BfloGuy]

If Maria Cantwell, that great mind and economist, says so, then it must be.

[Donald Rumsfeld Fan]

Cantwell said that if BP exports oil to short supply, it is manipulation. "Until we passed the energy bill last year, it may not have been a clear violation. Now it is illegal," she said.

And Cantwell and her buddies "short supply" by outlawing drilling in ANWAR and off our coasts, thereby driving up the cost of gasoline, which inturn reduces our ability to drive, which inturn reduces our "carbon footprint", which makes Al Gore happy and serves the Democratic party's environmental lobby.

[Yollopoliuhqui]

Competitive as in DeBeers?

[raisetheroof]

Cantwell said that if BP exports oil to short supply, it is manipulation.

The ignorance of that is astonishing.

Oil is a world wide fungible commodity. Alaska's exporting oil to Asia has no more effect on the overall supply than Canada's exporting oil to us.

When I was in Alaska a few years ago, I was told that oil is exported from there because Asia was closer, and so it was cheaper to send it there than to transport it all the way down to the lower 48.

[thackney]

Eight years ago, Federal Trade Commission investigators believed that BP occasionally exported oil from Alaska's North Slope to Asia in an effort to drive up spot crude oil prices on the West Coast.

Look at the prices for Alaskan Crude 8 years ago. In 1999, the monthly average price dropped below $6 a barrel. There was a flood of oil on the West Coast.

Alaska North Slope Wellhead Acquisition Price by First Purchasers
http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/dnav/pet/hist/f005071__3m.htm

When first built the pipeline oil could not be exported; that was part of the deal to get the pipeline approved through congress. The ban against exporting Alaskan North Slope was lifted in 1996 yet 100% of Alaskan North Slope oil is kept in America today. This has been the case for all but 4 years of the nearly 3 decades of Alaskan oil production. Between 1996-1999 5.5% of North Slope oil was exported to Asian countries. These exports were overwhelmingly supported by the US Congress and by the Clinton Administration to offset an oil glut in California at the time. In June 2000 Alaskan North Slope oil again ceased to be exported, and 100% of Alaskan North Slope production has stayed in America.

[thackney]

I was told that oil is exported from there because Asia was closer

False. Just look at a map.

[RightWhale]

When I was in Alaska a few years ago, I was told

LOL

[raisetheroof]

I stand corrected.

As much as I liked Alaska, I guess not everyone there knows what they're talking about. Same as everywhere else.