In the spring of 1973, a trader at the New York house Philipp Brothers sensed that oil prices were about to jump. At the time, crude was sold almost entirely under long-term contracts at prices fixed in advance. He began buying and reselling cargoes for immediate delivery, on what became known as the spot market. When the Arab embargo sent prices soaring that autumn, he used his contacts in the Middle East to buy Iranian and Iraqi crude. The following year he left his employer and founded his own house in Zug, Switzerland, with two partners. His name was Marc Rich.

He did not own a single well. Not one refinery. He had an address book, nerve, and banks that backed him. By the end of the 1970s his company had some thirty offices around the world. It would later become Glencore. Several of his former traders would found Trafigura.

The whole story of fuel trading fits in that scene: in this business, almost nobody has the product. Oil belongs to those who produce and refine it. Everyone else, the giants included, buys it to sell it on, with other people's money. Some built empires that way. Others lost everything, or ended up in court.

The secret: other people's money

A 30,000-tonne cargo of diesel is worth several tens of millions of dollars. No trader pays for it out of pocket. They borrow it, cargo after cargo.

The trader buys. Its bank issues a letter of credit in favour of the seller, a refinery or another trader, which is paid against the loading documents.
The cargo is the collateral. Until the trader repays, the bank holds the documents that carry title to the product, starting with the bill of lading.
The trader resells, often before loading, to a buyer who in turn pays by letter of credit or in advance.
The bank is repaid from that payment. The trader keeps the difference, minus freight, insurance, inspection, interest and price hedging.

Trafigura's accounts show what this looks like at a giant. In its financial year to the end of September 2025, the group posted 240.3 billion dollars of revenue for a net profit of 2.7 billion: a margin of about 1.1%. Its balance sheet carries 79.5 billion dollars of assets against 16.2 billion of equity. In other words, nearly four fifths of what it holds is financed by others than its shareholders. In March 2025 it renewed its main European bank facility, 5.6 billion dollars, and its large credit lines routinely bring together more than fifty banks.

Trading is a business of huge volumes, thin margins and trust. As long as the banks follow, all is well. The stories below show what happens when nerve pays off, and when trust breaks.

Success: Vitol, from Rhine barges to Libyan rebels

Vitol was founded in Rotterdam in 1966 by Henk Viëtor and Jacques Detiger. Its first business: trading fuel oil barges up the Rhine. Sixty years later it is the world's largest independent energy trader: 8 million barrels of crude and products a day in 2025, for 343 billion dollars of turnover.

One episode sums up its method. In the spring of 2011, Libya is at war. In the east, the rebels hold Benghazi and the oil fields, but they have run out of fuel to keep the country going. Vitol agrees to supply them: with Qatar, it would be their only supplier in the first months of the conflict. Within a few months, according to the chairman of the rebel oil company Agoco quoted by Reuters, Vitol delivered more than a billion dollars of fuel. How did it get paid? In oil. Agoco committed to hand over half of its production until the debt was cleared. By September 2011, about 500 million dollars had already been repaid in cash, crude and naphtha.

Vitol had no wells in Libya. It had credit, product bought elsewhere, ships, and the stomach for a risk that almost nobody else would take. In return it got what every trader is after: barrels that others did not have.

Accumulated profits then bought assets. In Africa, Vitol took full control in 2022 of Vivo Energy, which runs Shell-branded stations across the continent, in a deal valued at 2.3 billion dollars. In Ghana, it holds 35.6% of the offshore OCTP gas project, alongside Eni and the national oil company GNPC. The trader became a retailer and a producer, without ever ceasing to be a trader first.

Prepayment: a bet that can turn

The giants' other weapon is prepayment: advancing money to a producer against the promise of its future cargoes. The producer gets cash now, the trader gets guaranteed volumes.

In 2013 and again in 2014, Glencore and a group of banks advanced Chad's national oil company about 600 million and then 1.45 billion dollars, repayable in crude cargoes. The second loan allowed Chad to buy Chevron's assets in the country. On paper, the perfect deal.

Then the oil price collapsed. The promised cargoes were no longer worth enough to repay. The debt had to be restructured a first time in 2015, then again in 2018, after a year of deadlock in which Glencore accused Chad of diverting cargoes. The maturity was pushed back to 2030. Prepayment buys barrels, but it ties the trader to the fate of a country and the price of oil.

Failure: when one cargo is financed three times

February 2020, Singapore. Agritrade International, a coal and palm oil trader, collapses with about 1.5 billion dollars of debt. Its banks, including ING, Natixis and Commerzbank, accuse the company of issuing several bills of lading for the same cargo, to have it financed by several banks at once. Commerzbank even claims that cargoes it financed never existed. These allegations have yet to be tried, but Singapore police charged the company's former finance chief with obtaining nearly 20 million dollars from a bank on the strength of invalid bills of lading.

The bill of lading is a paper document whose form has barely changed in centuries. If banks do not talk to each other, a dishonest player can present the same one to several lenders.

Failure: 800 million of losses under the carpet

A few weeks later, in April 2020, it is the turn of Hin Leong, one of Asia's largest independent traders. Its founder reveals about 800 million dollars of futures losses, hidden for years in the accounts. Worse: part of the oil that secured its loans had already been sold. The company owes some 3.85 billion dollars to more than twenty banks, including HSBC, DBS and Standard Chartered. Creditors are told they can hope to recover 18 cents on the dollar.

Since then, banks have financed trading with much more suspicion. For a newcomer, that is a barrier. For a buyer, it is a protection: genuine trading leaves verifiable traces at every step.

Failure: the night of the Probo Koala in Abidjan

August 2006. The tanker Probo Koala, chartered by Trafigura, berths in Abidjan with residues from treating fuel on board. The waste is handed to a small local company, which dumps it at night at several open-air sites around the city. In the following days, thousands of residents fall ill. A United Nations report records at least fifteen deaths.

Trafigura has always disputed any link between the waste and the health problems. But the affair cost it dearly: in 2007 the company paid about 198 million dollars to the Ivorian state, without admitting liability, in exchange for the dropping of proceedings and the release of three of its executives held in Abidjan. In 2009 it agreed to pay up to 33 million euros to some 31,000 Ivorian claimants, in a settlement reached in London. In the Netherlands it was fined one million euros in 2010 for the illegal export of hazardous waste.

The lesson goes beyond the environment: a trader lives on its reputation with states, banks and clients. A single badly handled cargo can ruin it for years.

Failure: allocations bought with bribes

How do you get cargoes from a national oil company? By financing it, lifting its volumes regularly, paying without fail. Or by bribing.

In November 2022, in London, Glencore's British subsidiary was ordered to pay about 281 million pounds, the heaviest penalty ever imposed after a conviction in a Serious Fraud Office case. It had pleaded guilty. According to the investigation, its West Africa desk paid about 29 million dollars in bribes to gain preferential access to oil in Nigeria, Cameroon, Côte d'Ivoire, Equatorial Guinea and South Sudan, often disguised as "service fees" or "success fees". In South Sudan, two executives flew in by private jet carrying 800,000 dollars in cash. The same year, the group also pleaded guilty in the United States.

This case says something every African buyer should remember: the cargoes of our national oil companies are worth a great deal, and those who obtain them through shortcuts end up paying for it.

What this means for you

The right question is not "who has the product". It is: who can deliver it, with which documents, against what payment security. A seller who claims millions of tonnes "in tanks", ready to go, but cannot show a purchase contract, an identified depot or an inspection, is describing a chain that does not exist.

The price is built, not declared. A cargo is sold on the international quotation for the product, published daily by agencies such as Platts, plus a premium that covers freight, insurance, financing, inspection and margin. A fixed price far below the market, announced without a formula, is a warning sign. With the Strait of Hormuz largely blocked since 28 February 2026, the premium also depends on the loading port: a serious contract names it.

Minimum volumes exist for a reason. A large share of the cost of a delivery by sea is fixed: chartering the vessel, inspection, insurance, port charges. Spread over a few hundred tonnes, they make the price per tonne prohibitive. That is why deliveries by sea come in lots of several thousand tonnes, and small quantities by truck from a depot.

Payment follows the documents. In genuine trading, the buyer pays by irrevocable letter of credit, or makes an advance against a signed contract, and the money is released only against verifiable documents: bill of lading, certificates of quality and quantity from an independent inspector such as SGS or Bureau Veritas. Nobody serious asks for "procedure fees" before a contract even exists.

Frequently asked questions

Who really owns the fuel sold in West Africa?

Crude producers and refineries, until they sell it. After that, the product passes through traders, who mostly buy it with their banks' money, then through importers and distributors who store it in port depots before delivering it by truck.

How do Vitol and Trafigura finance their purchases?

Through bank credit lines renewed every year, which finance each cargo and take the product as collateral. At the end of September 2025, Trafigura had 16.2 billion dollars of equity for 79.5 billion of assets.

What is an oil prepayment?

An advance made by a trader, with its banks, to a producer, repaid in future cargoes. Glencore advanced about 1.45 billion dollars to Chad's national oil company in 2014. When the oil price fell, the debt had to be restructured twice.

How do you spot a fake fuel seller?

They claim to have the product but cannot show a purchase contract or an identified depot, announce a fixed price far below the international quotation, and ask for fees before any contract. A genuine seller accepts independent inspection and payment against documents.

What we do

GraceRoad does not claim to own a refinery. We buy and we deliver: diesel and gasoline come from our own depots or those of our partners in Dakar, Abidjan, Lomé or Cotonou, depending on availability, and full cargoes from international traders, with the loading port written into the contract. The price is set for each order, on the international quotation for the product plus a stated premium. Every batch is inspected and delivered with its analysis certificate, and payment follows the documents. Tell us your product, your volume and your delivery point.

Ask for a fuel price on WhatsApp

Sources: Wikipedia, New Statesman and Swissinfo (Marc Rich: spot trading in 1973, Marc Rich & Co founded in Zug in 1974, some thirty offices by the end of the 1970s, origins of Glencore and Trafigura); Vitol, 2025 review and history page (founded 1966, Rhine barges, 8 million barrels a day, 343 billion dollars); Reuters, September 2011, and MEED (more than a billion dollars of fuel supplied to the Libyan rebels, repaid in crude by Agoco); Trafigura, 2025 annual and half-year reports; Global Trade Review (bank syndications); Bloomberg and AJ Bell, 2022 (Vivo Energy buyout); Eni, May 2025 (OCTP); Africanews, 22 February 2018, and Engineering News, 29 November 2017 (Glencore prepayments to Chad); Global Trade Review and Free Malaysia Today, 2020 (Agritrade); Global Trade Review, Argus and Ship & Bunker, 2020 (Hin Leong); NBC News and The New Humanitarian, February 2007, Al Jazeera, September 2009, DutchNews, November 2012 (Probo Koala); Law Society Gazette, Jurist and Law Gazette, November 2022 (Glencore Energy UK conviction); Al Jazeera, 4 and 6 October 2026 (Strait of Hormuz).

Fuel trading explained: nobody has the product, everybody finances it