Brightoil's Head of Trading Resigns

Quek Chin Thean is the latest and most senior executive to leave Brightoil.

Quek Chin Thean, the global head of trading at Brightoil Petroleum and chief executive of the company's Singapore operation has resigned, sources have told the news agency Reuters today.

Quek was previously global head of fuel oil trading with BP, and is the latest and most senior executive to leave Brightoil.

The company declined to comment when contacted, and Reuters said Quek did not answer their calls when they tried to contact him.

He was one of around 20 staff who left BP to join Brightoil in 2010 in the aftermath of the Deepwater Horizon explosion and resulting spill, and this year has seen a number of former BP executives move on.

A total of six executives are reported to have exited Brightoil since June.

In June Vince Matassa left Brightoil, who was at the time head of trading operations in the U.S., an exit that prompted the company to conduct an audit into its U.S. operations after it revealed it had "accumulated losses of up to approximately $15 million."

Then in October Paul Bradshaw, who was Director, Oil Storage and Operations at Brightoil, resigned along with derivatives trader Lim Eu Ming, another former BP employee, and senior fuel oil trader Davy Choo.

Bradshaw was subsequently appointed the new Regional Manager for OW Bunker Asia.

The resignations add to a troubled year for the fuel oil trader who reported a fall of 76 percent in net profit for the previous fiscal year ending June 30, 2012.

Brightoil's activity in the fuel oil swaps market has also fallen sharply since July, with September's volume of 575,000 metric tonnes (mt) down over 42% from just over a million mt in July.

Earlier in November the Hong Kong-listed Brightoil Petroleum (Holdings) Ltd [HKG:0933] issued a profit warning saying based on its preliminary assessment of unaudited management accounts "the Group has recorded a significant loss."