Exclusive: Arcadia (trading firm) may have rigged Yemen exports: cable

[villager]

Source: Reuters

Exclusive: Arcadia may have rigged Yemen exports: cable

ATLANTA/NEW YORK | Wed Jun 1

(Reuters) - Oil trading firm Arcadia Petroleum, sued by regulators last week for allegedly manipulating U.S. oil prices, used hardball tactics in Yemen to buy the country's oil exports at below market prices, until authorities revamped their sales process to break the trading house's "long-standing monopoly", according to a confidential State Department cable.

The September 2009 cable says that an internal government shift in control over the country's valuable oil exports, meant to open up oil bidding to more international buyers, threatened Arcadia's sway over Yemen's exports.

It also put at risk an alliance between Arcadia and its "local agent" in Yemen, tribal leader Hamid al-Ahmar, the cable says. Arcadia, in an interview, denied the allegations in the cable, saying it did not employ al-Ahmar as an agent, although it did work with some of his companies in the oil trading business. The company said it always paid official market prices for Yemen's export oil.

<snip>


Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/06/01/us-yemen-arcadia-wiki-idUSTRE7506TC20110601