Oil trading major Glencore has been buying spot cargoes of Middle Eastern crude grades for a Singaporean refinery it has recently acquired from Shell, anonymous traders have told Bloomberg. Glencore has bought in recent weeks at least three cargoes of Qatar’s Al-Shaheen crude and at least one of Abu Dhabi’s Upper Zakum of 500,000 barrels each for February loading, according to Bloomberg’s sources.
In this way, commodity traders gain direct access to a refinery to which they can send part of the crude they sell and become larger players in the crude options and futures market to hedge their exposure to physical crude oil. In recent months, the largest independent oil trading houses have acquired several refineries from Big Oil worldwide in consortia with other companies.