Jan 9 (Reuters) - A unit of French energy company

TotalEnergies agreed to pay $5 million to settle

claims by U.S. energy regulators that it and some of its traders

allegedly manipulated the natural gas market in 2009-2012.

The settlement is much smaller than the $214 million the

U.S. Federal Energy Regulatory Commission had sought from

TotalEnergies' Total Energies Gas & Power North America unit and

some of its traders.

To fully resolve the claims and allegations, the

TotalEnergies unit agreed to pay $5 million in restitution to

certain agreed-upon non-governmental organizations, FERC said in

an order on Wednesday.

The order was neither an admission of liability by the

TotalEnergies' unit nor a concession by FERC Enforcement that

its claims are not well-founded, FERC said.

Officials from TotalEnergies were not immediately available

for comment.

In 2015, FERC alleged the TotalEnergies' unit made

intentionally losing trades - known as "uneconomic" trading - in

order to affect index prices in the U.S. Southwest on at least

38 occasions between June 2009 and June 2012. Those losses would

be offset by larger gains on other related positions, FERC said.

It was one of a series of so-called loss leader, or

leveraged trading strategies, that FERC has pursued over the

past couple of decades in which traders lose money in one market

to benefit larger positions in a benchmark or other financial

index.