Aramco arm to begin Asian crude trading in Q3: report

Aramco Trading Co. (ATC), the trading arm of Saudi Aramco, is set to start selling crude in Asia through its office in Singapore in Q3 2018, Reuters reported, citing ATC chief executive Ibrahim Al-Buainain.

The company aims to increase its volumes for trading crude and refined products to 6 million barrels per day (bpd) by 2020, for both oil products and third-party crude trading.

“We will be targeting the third quarter of this year (for crude trading) out of Singapore for Southeast and North Asia. We are doing our due diligence,” he told the news agency.

While ATC’s headquarters would remain in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, Al-Buainain said the firm plans to expand to Europe and open its regional office in either London or Geneva by the first quarter of next year.

The company’s focus is “the security of supply for the Kingdom”, Al-Buainain said.

Meanwhile, ATC has no intensions of opening an office in the United States, he added.

Set up in 2012 to market refined products, base oils and bulk petrochemicals, ATC is expanding into non-Saudi crude mainly to supply Aramco’s international joint ventures such as the Motiva refinery in the US and S-Oil in South Korea.

It trades around 1.5 million bpd of refined, liquid chemical and polymer products.