Duke Energy Trading Settles With CFTC

HOUSTON -- Duke Energy Trading and Marketing has agreed to pay $28 million to settle a Commodity Futures Trading Commission investigation into its reporting of natural gas trading information, the company announced recently.

Duke Energy Trading and Marketing, a joint venture in which Duke Energy Corp. has a 60 percent interest, did not admit any wrongdoing and has recorded a $17 million charge to its third quarter earnings in order to reflect the settlement, the company said.

The energy trading and marketing company said it has terminated and disciplined some of its Houston-based traders responsible for reporting natural gas trading information to publications that compile index prices.

The company said it changed its reporting process in 2002 after industrywide natural gas reporting problems were identified. Duke Energy Trading and Marketing now requires that all information provided to the publications be validated and reported by its risk management staff instead of by traders.

The practices investigated by the commission were limited to the company's natural gas trading operation based in Houston, the company said. It said appropriate price reporting took place within its Western trading operations, no problems were detected within its electricity price reporting and the practices in question did not affect any published price index.

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS