The Securities and Exchange Commission today charged a former 20-year employee of BP p.l.c. and a senior responder during the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill with insider trading in BP securities based on confidential information about the magnitude of the disaster.\u00a0 The price of BP securities fell significantly after the April 20, 2010 explosion on the Deepwater Horizon rig, and the subsequent oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, resulted in an extensive clean-up effort.<\/p>\n
According to the SEC\u2019s complaint, filed in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana, BP tasked Keith A. Seilhan with coordinating BP\u2019s oil collection and clean-up operations in the Gulf of Mexico and along the coast.\u00a0 Seilhan, an experienced crisis manager, directed BP\u2019s oil skimming operations and its efforts to contain the expansion of the oil spill.\u00a0 The complaint alleges that within days, Seilhan received nonpublic information on the extent of the evolving disaster, including oil flow estimates and data on the volume of oil floating on the surface of the Gulf.<\/p>\n
\u201cSeilhan sold his family\u2019s BP securities after he received confidential information about the severity of the spill that the public didn’t know,\u201d said Daniel M. Hawke, chief of the Division of Enforcement\u2019s Market Abuse Unit.\u00a0 \u201cCorporate insiders must not misuse the material nonpublic information they receive while responding to unique or disastrous corporate events, even where they stand to suffer losses as a consequence of those events.\u201d<\/p>\n
The complaint alleges that by April 29, 2010, in filings to the SEC, BP estimated that the flow rate of the spill was up to 5,000 barrels of oil per day (bopd).\u00a0 The company\u2019s public estimate was significantly less than the actual flow rate, which was estimated later to be between 52,700 and 62,200 bopd.\u00a0 The information that Seilhan obtained indicated that the magnitude of the oil spill and thus, BP\u2019s potential liability and financial exposure, was likely to be greater than had been publicly disclosed.<\/p>\n
According to the complaint, while in possession of this material, nonpublic information, and in breach of duties owed to BP and its shareholders, Seilhan directed the sale of his family\u2019s entire $1 million portfolio of BP securities over the course of two days in late April 2010.\u00a0 The trades allowed Seilhan to avoid losses and reap unjust profits as the price of BP securities dropped by approximately 48 percent after the sales on April 29 and April 30, 2010, reaching their lowest point in late June 2010.<\/p>\n
Without admitting or denying the allegations, Seilhan consented to the entry of a final judgment permanently enjoining him from future violations of federal antifraud laws and SEC antifraud rules.\u00a0 Seilhan, of Tomball, Texas, also agreed to return $105,409 of allegedly ill-gotten gains, plus $13,300 of prejudgment interest, and pay a civil penalty of $105,409.\u00a0 The settlement is subject to court approval.<\/p>\n
The SEC\u2019s investigation was conducted by Matthew S. Raalf, Brian P. Thomas, John S. Rymas, Kelly L. Gibson, Brendan P. McGlynn, G. Jeffrey Boujoukos, Michael J. Rinaldi, and Christopher R. Kelly in the Philadelphia Regional Office.\u00a0 The SEC appreciates the assistance of the U.S. Department of Justice\u2019s Deepwater Horizon Task Force.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Securities and Exchange Commission today charged a former 20-year employee of BP p.l.c. and a senior responder during the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill with insider trading in BP securities based on confidential information about the magnitude of the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-41688","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-press-releases","category-syndicated"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hedgeco.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41688","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hedgeco.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hedgeco.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hedgeco.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hedgeco.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41688"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/hedgeco.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41688\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":41689,"href":"https:\/\/hedgeco.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41688\/revisions\/41689"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hedgeco.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41688"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hedgeco.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41688"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hedgeco.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41688"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}