November 02, 2020 [S&P Global Platts] – Saudi Arabia’s Aramco Trading Co. is on track to hit 6 million b/d of crude and petrochemical products volume within the next three years, President and CEO Ibrahim Al-Buainain said in a video released Oct. 27.

“Our vision is on track. We are expanding, if we aggregate the trading volumes, which are around 3 million b/d today, with Motiva [refinery in the United States], which is 1.8 million b/d, we are almost at 5 million b/d,” Buainian said in an interview with Gulf Intelligence. “With Jizan [refinery] coming onstream and other systems are increasing their capacity, we’ll be reaching 6 million within the next three years.”

The long-delayed 400,000 b/d Jizan refinery and petrochemical project on the Red Sea coast is expected to start up in Q1 2021, Saudi Aramco CEO Amin Nasser said in August.

During the oil price crash earlier this year, Aramco Trading took advantage of the contango in the market to buy crude from abroad for storage, Buainain said.

“This year around 40% of our traded volume is bought from a third party, to sell to a third party,” Buainain said. “We’ve been increasing gradually the third-party trading in the market.”

Saudi Aramco established Aramco Trading in 2010. It has offices in the kingdom, Singapore and Fujairah in the UAE. In February 2020, it also opened an office in London, which it said would serve Europe and provide a launching pad for operations in Africa.

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