Oil firms sucked into EU probe on price fixing

Three of Europe’s biggest oil explorers are among companies being questioned by European antitrust regulators about potential manipulation of prices in the €2.6tn annual global crude market.

Royal Dutch Shell, BP, Statoil, and Platts, the oil-price data collector owned by McGraw Hill Financial, said they are being investigated after the European Commission conducted raids in three countries to seek out evidence of collusion.

Price fixing in energy markets has the potential to inflate production costs and consumer prices for everything from petrol to cosmetics.