April 08, 2025 [Reuters]- The world’s top energy trader, Vitol, made a net profit of $8 billion to $8.5 billion in 2024, a steep drop from record highs of 2022 and 2023 but still exceeding rivals by a wide margin despite lower volatility, two industry sources familiar with the results said.

Energy traders earned record profits in 2022 and 2023 as the market began to recover from the pandemic and also faced gas shortages following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Vitol declined to comment.

Combined with $15 billion in net profits in 2022 and $13 billion in 2023, Vitol made nearly $45 billion in the last five years – figures that were previously unimaginable for oil traders and could only be generated by oil majors.

Vitol has held the crown of the world’s biggest and most profitable trader for over a decade, but before the pandemic it made between $1 billion and $2 billion in annual profits.

The company is owned by 400 to 500 employees, many of them traders, who are rewarded based on their annual performance.

The firm paid a record dividend of $6.5 billion to its employee shareholders on its 2023 results. A dividend for 2024 has not yet been announced.

Vitol has also spent billions of dollars acquiring oil production and refining assets around the world and diversifying into gas, power and more recently coal and metals trading.

The firm traded 7.2 million barrels per day of oil and fuels in 2024, down slightly from the previous year, and amounting to around 7% of global supply.

Vitol, which ramped up gas trading amid Europe’s gas crisis of 2022-2023, expanded its LNG trading volumes by 10% to 19.4 million tons of oil equivalent in 2024.

Vitol’s rival Trafigura made a $2.8-billion profit in 2024 following $7.3 billion in 2023 and $6.8 billion in 2022.

By comparison, oil major BP’s profit was $1.2 billion in 2024, down from $15.9 billion in 2023. BP’s bigger rival Shell reported a net profit of $16.52 billion in 2024, down from $19.6 billion in 2023.

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