El Paso Corp. disclosed Monday it has provided the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Houston with details of more incidents in which its employees gave deceptive information on natural gas trades to the energy trade publication, Platts’ Inside F.E.R.C. At the same time, federal prosecutors said in court the false reporting practices of El Paso traders were part of a two-year-old conspiracy to manipulate energy prices.

“The information recently provided [by El Paso] indicates additional instances of inaccurate reporting to the trade publication Inside FERC…The personnel engaged in these activities are no longer with the company,” the energy company said in a prepared statement. The bogus reporting of gas trade data involved El Paso Merchant Energy Co., it noted.

“While the company has no evidence that the El Paso Merchant Energy reporting to Inside FERC resulted in any unrepresentative price index,” any inaccurate reporting of price or volume information to trade publications was “unacceptable,” El Paso said.

The company also said it has or is in the process of turning over the information on its reported prices for trades to other federal agencies, including the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC). It noted it is continuing to review information that it reported to other trade publishers of energy price indices as well.

The company did not say how many trades were involved, when they were carried out, or who were the El Paso employees involved. “I don’t have any more specific information that I can give you other than what was in the press release,” said El Paso spokeswoman Norma Dunn, when pressed for details.

Platts spokesman Jim Keener said the publication hasn’t been supplied with any information yet involving the El Paso Merchant gas trades. He further noted Platts’ “editors and journalists have no vested interest in the market on which they report,” and “work vigorously to maintain the integrity of [its] price survey” by weeding out questionable prices for trades.

Platts has been subpoenaed by FERC and the CFTC in their continuing investigations of traders’ price reporting practices.

El Paso’s disclosure comes a month after a former company vice president and energy trader was indicted in Houston on charges that he submitted price and volume information on a series of bogus gas trades to Platt’s Inside FERC Natural Gas Market Report to use in calculating its index price for gas. Todd Geiger was arrested in early December and charged with one count of wire fraud and one count of knowingly transmitting false information on gas trades to an energy trade newsletter that publishes a gas price index, both felonies (See Daily GPI, Dec. 5).

Geiger has pleaded innocent, and his trial is set for March 24. He faces up to 10 years in prison on each count, and fines of $500,000.

At a pre-trial conference in U.S. District Court Monday in Houston, federal prosecutors signaled that Geiger’s alleged activities were the tip of the iceberg at El Paso. “Even though he is not charged with conspiracy, we believe his actions are part of a conspiracy that goes back two years,” Assistant U.S. Attorney John Lewis told The Associated Press.

Lewis said the U.S. Attorney’s Office last week obtained a recording that included 140 telephone calls taped by El Paso of “other traders at El Paso and Inside FERC.”

Despite the wave of negative news, El Paso stock finished up 38 cents at $9.55 a share Monday.

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