Mystery Oil Gets Dangled to Houston Traders at Dirt-Cheap Prices

The offer seemed too good to be true: Up to 200,000 barrels of heavy-sour crude at a $30 discount to the US benchmark.

The sales pitch came from Jonathan Plemel of little-known trading house Sidewalks Holdings LLC. Plemel had documents saying the crude was from Mexico, said he’d even visited a lab in Coatzacoalcos for quality tests. But the prospective buyers he approached were wary. “I couldn’t say for certain where the oil was coming from,” Plemel told Bloomberg.

Plemel isn’t the only Houston middleman marketing crude of hazy provenance as high prices spur more bargain-hunting in the oil market. ...