Brightoil Houston Office Part of Crude Oil Trading Plans

by Ship & Bunker News Team
Wednesday September 26, 2012

Hong Kong-listed Brightoil Petroleum (Holdings) Ltd (Brightoil) [HKG:0933] has said it will not close its Houston office and instead will hire "about 10 traders" in Singapore and the United States to start physical trading in crude oil, Reuters reports.

The comments were made to reporters in an earnings briefing on Tuesday, and follow uncertainty for the location after its head of trading operations in the U.S, Vince Marassa, resigned in June.

"Moving into financial year 2013, we plan to strengthen our crude oil team and start our crude oil trading business," said Denny Tan, Brightoil's executive director and chief financial officer.

The move is part of the company's plan to take a stake in China's 5 million barrel-per-day crude import market, Reuters said.

Tan said it will add staff in Singapore before the U.S., and the Houston office will function as a regional office for trading and upstream acquisition.

Matassa joined Brightoil in August 2010 having spent almost 14 years at BP, and following his exit, Brightoil said it was conducting an audit into its U.S. operations as during Matassa's term at Brightoil, "the Group's U.S. business accumulated losses of up to approximately $15 million," according to a company statement.

The company issued a profit warning at the end of April saying it expected net profits to "decrease significantly," and today revealed they slumped 76% year-on-year to HKD $305.7 million (USD $39.4 milliom) from HKD $1.27 billion (USD $163.8 million) in 2011.

Ship & Bunker News Team
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