This settlement amount is significantly lower than the $214 million that the U.S. Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) had initially sought from TotalEnergies' Total Energies Gas & Power North America unit and its traders.
To settle the claims, the TotalEnergies unit will provide $5 million in restitution to specific non-governmental organizations as outlined in a FERC order issued on Wednesday.
FERC clarified that this order does not imply any admission of liability by TotalEnergies' unit, nor does it suggest that FERC Enforcement believes its claims lack merit. Representatives from TotalEnergies were not available for immediate comment.
In 2015, FERC accused the TotalEnergies unit of engaging in intentionally unprofitable trades, referred to as "uneconomic" trading, to manipulate index prices in the U.S. Southwest on at least 38 occasions from June 2009 to June 2012. According to FERC, these losses were intended to be compensated by larger profits from related positions.
This case is part of a broader trend of loss leader or leveraged trading strategies that FERC has investigated over the past two decades, where traders incur losses in one market to gain advantages in benchmark or other financial indices.