US refiners Phillips 66, Citgo, Valero seek to buy crude directly from Venezuela

Phillips 66, Citgo seek to purchase directly starting in April, Valero later in the year, bypassing the trading houses to get a bigger share of the spread.

HOUSTON, Feb 18 (Reuters) - U.S. refiners Phillips 66 and Citgo Petroleum are seeking to buy heavy crude directly from Venezuelan state oil company PDVSA starting in April to maximize profits, rather than purchasing through trading houses and U.S. oil major Chevron (CVX.N), according to sources familiar with the efforts.

Trading houses Trafigura and Vitol in January secured the first U.S. licenses to export Venezuelan oil as part of a $2 billion deal between Caracas and Washington. Chevron has held an authorization to operate there and ship crude since last year.

Phillips 66 (PSX.N), one of the biggest U.S. refiners, is seeking compliance and internal clearance to purchase directly from PDVSA, three sources said. Once the company is ready, it plans to charter tankers to load the crude at PDVSA's terminals, one of the sources added.

The company bought Venezuelan oil from Vitol last month at

@Vitol sees US #oil output peaking at 14MM bpd in next few years #Shale #OOTT

Vitol sees U.S. oil output peaking at 14 million bpd in next few years: CEO

Thursday, 27 February 2020 | 20:00

Trading house Vitol sees U.S. oil production peaking at around 14 million barrels per day in the next few years, its chief executive told the IP Week. 

"Shale is a very different industry. It takes a great deal to maintain pressure. It takes some 20,000 new wells every year to stand still at current production levels so we have oil production peaking in the new few years because it takes so much operationally just to maintain levels," Vitol CEO Russell Hardy said.

"So that shifts a little of power back to OPEC and OPEC+ but I don't think anyone can afford to be complacent about that."
Source: Reuters (Reporting by Julia Payne; editing by Jason Neely)

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#LNG Grows for Trading Houses From @Gunvor to @Trafigura, @Glencore - Bloomberg

LNG is enjoying more rapid growth with about $150 billion in revenue last year, according to McKinsey Energy Insights. By next year, LNG volumes will be more than triple what they were at the start of the century, making it the quickest-growing segment of the fossil-fuel industry, according to Shell.

Commodity Traders Turn to LNG as Big Oil Profits Prove Elusive

Gunvor, Vitol and Trafigura are doing for natural gas what they did in the oil market in the 1970s.

By Anna Shiryaevskaya and Andy Hoffman

March 27, 2019, 6:00 AM GMT+1 Updated on March 27, 2019, 12:33 PM GMT+1

With margins narrowing in the crude oil business, some of the world's biggest commodity trading houses are helping to reshape the energy industry with a drive into liquefied natural gas.

Gunvor Group Ltd., Trafigura Group Pte. Ltd. and Vitol SA have moved a step beyond trading LNG, investing in ships and terminals handling the fuel. That's accelerating the growth of the industry, moving more gas that traditionally has flowed through pipelines onto ocean-going tankers chilled to minus 162 degrees Celsius (minus 260 degrees Fahrenheit).

Those houses in the 1970s broke away from Big Oil's long-term contracts and created a market where cargoes change hands in the blink of an eye. Now they're turning their attention to LNG, where spot trading is rapidly expanding. The result is handing utilities from Centrica Plc to RWE AG more flexibility to buy gas, encouraging them to make the leap away from more polluting coal.

"It looks like a much younger crude oil market,'' Russell Hardy, chief executive officer of Vitol, said in an interview in Lausanne, Switzerland. "It is an area that can grow and that is a positive for us.''

A Boom for LNG

Volumes by the end of this decade will at least triple since 2000.

The top three commodity trading houses active in LNG have more than doubled their delivered volumes over the past two years and took almost 9 percent of the global trade in 2018, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Royal Dutch Shell Plc remains the industry leader with 22 percent and stakes in LNG plants and import terminals.

Other traders such as Glencore Plc and Koch Supply & Trading LP also are building expertise or looking to expand in LNG. Most trading houses set up their desks earlier this decade, while Vitol started back in 2005.

Trading Houses in LNG

Three largest commodity traders have boosted volumes in past few years.