Azernews.Az

By Gunay Camal

SOCAR Trading SA, the marketing arm of Azerbaijan’s state oil company SOCAR, has hired three new crude traders, who will be based in London with a view to targeting the Chinese market, SOCAR Trading Chief Executive Arzu Azimov said in an interview with Reuters on November 30.

“Wang Zheng, the former head of crude at UNIPEC [China's largest international trade company], in London, and Xun Dong, a former crude trader at Shell [an Anglo-Dutch multinational oil and gas company] joined SOCAR this month and a third trader is due to join in 2017,” he said.

“Of course we will exercise their (traders') network in China and access to refineries in China,” Azimov said.

“Our strategy is global crude trading and the missing point so far was coverage of Asia because Asia was mostly concentrated around marketing/supply with national oil companies and government-to-government deals,” he added.

He further noted that SOCAR Trading plans to sell directly to Chinese refiners, the so-called "teapots", which were given import licenses in 2015.

“Asian refiners prefer heavier crude,” he clarified.

Headquartered in Geneva, SOCAR Trading was incorporated in December 2007 as the marketing arm of SOCAR with a mandate to market Azerbaijani barrels produced from the Azeri-Chirag-Guneshli field and other surrounding fields in Azerbaijan.

While the company continues to market the bulk of SOCAR crude oil export volumes from Ceyhan port in Turkey, it has also been able to develop significant third party volumes through both leveraging its system barrels, as well as its experienced traders developing new business.

SOCAR Trading’s activities cover the US, and countries in Europe and Asia.

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