Oil Trading VolumeIncrease Expected

Singapore- Saudi Aramco Products Trading Company’s (ATC) President, and CEO Mr. Ibrahim Al-Buainain spoke at the 34th Annual Asia Pacific Petroleum Conference. According to the companies top official’s interview on Monday, ATC expects to increase its oil trading volume to 6 million barrels per day by 2020, 50 percent higher than current levels.

President and CEO, Mr.Al- Buainain touched on subjects such as IMO 2020, ATC’s future trading volumes, and ATC’s objectives for setting up trading operations in Singapore.The company currently trades 4 million b/d of refined products and crude, including volumes from the US. ATC sees Asia as their key growth market.
As for the Singapore office, Mr. Al-Buainain said he expects the company’s office to gain up to 40 more employees within the next two years. The company plans to launch LNG trading in Singapore, "We would like the Singapore office to be a hub for our LNG trading, so we are building capacity," he said, in addition, Aramco Trading plans to trade physical LNG cargoes mainly out of Singapore. Moreover, the company plans on opening offices in Europe. Mr. Al-Buainain believes that ATC will establish an office in either Geneva or London by the second half of next year.

According to Mr.Al-Buainain, ATC is expecting to benefit from a switch by ships to cleaner fuels in 2020.“The second-hand effect of the IMO is the oversupply of high-sulfur fuel oil (HSFO) which in our case is a positive because we are net short on fuel oil and that will help us in meeting our requirements (for HSFO) in power generation,” he said.

In 2012, ATC was established to market refined products, base oils, and bulk petrochemicals. Beginning with refined products from its overseas refineries in the past years, leading them to introduce trading non-Saudi crude oil in 2017 as the world’s largest oil exporter successfully optimizes profits.