Equinor's trading arm and the French energy regulator fined Equinor $12.5 million

The French energy regulator CRE fined Equinor of Norway and its trading subsidiary Danske Commodities 12 million euros ($12.5million) for violating wholesale gas market regulations.

The Norwegian group announced that Equinor, Danske and the other companies fined 4 and 8 millions euros, respectively, would appeal the decision.

In its announcement of Thursday, the CRE said that it had fined two regulators in relation to the bookings of annual gas transport capacity related the interconnection point for the French and Spanish networks in 2019 or 2020.

The CRE claimed that Equinor had lowered the price of its trading business by cooperating with Danske in the first round annual gas capacity auction. This claim was denied by the company.

The company stated that it disagreed with the CRE decision because "we have no evidence of any collusion".

It added: "Equinor maintains Equinor, Danske Commodities and Equinor acted independently from each other and that Equinor only booked capacity to retain access the Spanish capacity-booking platform and to secure access to Spanish gas market." Reporting by Louise Breusch Rasmussen, Editing by Essi Lahto and Terje Solsvik. David Goodman.

(source: Reuters)