BENGALURU (Reuters) – Aramco Trading’s chief executive on Tuesday said the company was currently trading 6 million barrels per day of crude and products.
Saudi Aramco and other Middle East oil producers stepped up their trading efforts as a way to boost income after the 2014 collapse in oil prices.
They have slowly gained market share from major oil companies and commodity trading groups, using access to their own feedstocks and strength in refining to compete aggressively.
“We’re doing very well. We’re expanding and recently we opened Aramco Trading America (ATA). So now we’re around 6 million barrels per day trading volume (for all liquids),” CEO Ibrahim Al-Buainain said at the Indian Energy Week event in Bengaluru.
Motiva Trading, Saudi Aramco’s trading business in Houston in the United States, changed its name to Aramco Trading America and became a wholly-owned subsidiary of Aramco Trading Co.(ATC) earlier this year.
Under the purchase agreement, ATA became the sole supplier and offtaker of Motiva Enterprises, which owns North America’s largest refinery with a capacity of 630,000 barrels a day.
(Reporting by Florence Tan, writing by Shivam Patel and Maha El Dahan; editing by Jason Neely and Jane Merriman)
