World’s Top Oil Trader Earns $13 Billion in Another Strong Year

The world’s top independent oil trader, Vitol, booked a net profit of $13 billion for 2023, wrapping up a second consecutive year of very high net income following record 2022 earnings, the Financial Times reported on Monday, quoting sources familiar with the privately-owned group’s results.

The disruptions in the energy markets and the high volatility in commodity prices in 2022 and 2023 benefited the largest independent trader, and all other major independent trading groups such as Trafigura and Gunvor, but Vitol’s earnings far outpaced those of its closest rivals.   

Last month, Vitol reported its turnover and volumes traded for 2023, which showed that turnover fell to $400 billion from $505 billion for 2022, with 7.3 million barrels per day (bpd) of crude oil and products delivered, slightly down from 7.4 million bpd traded in 2022.  

Vitol Group booked a record-high profit of $15.1 billion for 2022, thanks to the highly volatile energy markets after the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

For 2023, the net profit came in at $13 billion, per FT’s sources, and although lower than in the record year for Big Oil earnings in 2022, the net income was still more than triple Vitol’s 2021 profit of $4 billion.

To compare, Trafigura’s net profit jumped to about $7.4 billion for the year to September 30, 2023, up from $7 billion for the previous fiscal year, which was the then-record-high profit for the privately owned trading group. Trafigura paid its highest-ever dividends for its 2022/2023 financial year after posting another record-high profit amid volatile markets.

Gunvor Group, for its part, earned $1.252 billion in net profit on revenue of $127 billion last year, for the second strongest trading result in the group’s history, it said last week.

Vitol and other commodity traders have amassed up to $120 billion in cash over several successive years of record performance and profits. The industry’s new guard of executives is now sitting on huge amounts of cash to reinvest and turn the top trading houses from market brokers to industry shapers, according to consultancy Oliver Wyman.  

By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com

More Top Reads From Oilprice.com:

• UAE Sends Medium Sour Crude to Local Refinery Instead of Exporting It
• Saudi Arabia Hikes Oil Prices in Increasingly Tight Market
• StanChart: Oil Demand Set for All-Time High in May