LOUIS DREYFUS
* France’s Louis Dreyfus Group is a worldwide trader, processor and merchandiser of various agricultural and energy commodities.
* It also trades ocean freight, metals and financial instruments and is involved in real estate and electricity distribution.
* It launched in 1851 in Alsace, in the eastern part of France.
* Its commodity trading subsidiary generates $35 billion in revenue.

GLENCORE INTERNATIONAL AG
* Was founded in 1974 by Marc Rich as Marc Rich & Co.
* The current chief executive officer is Ivan Glasenberg.
* It is headquartered in Baar, Switzerland, and employs about 2,000 people worldwide, directly, indirectly.
* It has three main business groups — metals and minerals, energy products and agricultural products.
* Privately held Glencore is preparing to become a listed company after issuing a $2.2 billion convertible bond last year.
* In August, it posted a 42 percent jump in first-half net profit to $1.56 billion and unveiled plans for spinning off or listing its gold assets, which may be worth over $5 billion.
* Glencore directly or through its subsidiaries holds significant stakes in publicly listed companies such as Xstrata Plc.
* In 2008, Oiltanking announced the signing of an agreement to enter into a joint venture with a group of companies, where Glencore had a 15% stake, to jointly develop a new petroleum terminal in Yeosu, South Korea.
* Glencore has bought a 51 percent stake in Singapore marine fuel supplier Chemoil Energy Ltd. Buying Chemoil gave Glencore a valuable marine fuels business in the United States and a wealth of fuel storage terminal assets in Asia and the Middle East.
* Glencore to invest € 250 million in the construction of a Sea-Tank petroleum products terminal in the port of Antwerp.

GUNVOR INTERNATIONAL B.V
* Gunvor International is registered in Amsterdam with a major trading operation in Geneva.
* It was founded in 1997 by Swedish oil trader Torbjorn Torknqvist and Russian businessman Gennady Timchenko.
* Gunvor handles about a third of Russian crude exports.
* It specialises in the trade, transport and storage of oil and petroleum products and it has recently moved into power, gas and coal.
* Gunvor controlled two liquid terminals in Ust Luga, one of Russia’s fastest-growing ports, in south-west of St. Petersburg. In September 2009, Gunvor has sold Ust-Luga bunker complex (ULBC) under construction to Russia’s state pipeline company Transneft. Gunvor still remained the owner of another oil product terminal under construction in Ust-Luga, Liquid Bulk Cargo Complex.
* Earlier in September this year, sources said it had postponed the launch of the Ust Luga Liquid Bulk Cargo Complex to February.
* In 2009, the company had turnover of $53 billion, down from $65 billion in 2008. Its total trading volume was 2.3 million barrel per day, up 10 percent.

MERCURIA ENERGY GROUP LTD
* Swiss-owned Mercuria Energy Group ranks itself as one of the world’s five largest independent energy traders with turnover in 2008 of about $46 billion.
* The group president and chief executive officer is Marco Dunand. He told Reuters in May the company may consider an initial public offering of shares in 2-3 years.
* Its product range spans crude oil, fuel oil, middle distillates, naphtha, gasoline.
* It also trades power, natural gas, coal, biodiesel, vegetable oils, and carbon emissions. It said earlier this year it would start liquefied natural gas (LNG) trading business.
* The firm has more than 30 million barrels of total storage capacity around the world and is active in shipping markets.
* Mercuria has the following terminal & processing assets:
Vesta Terminal Flushing B.V., (The Netherlands) – formerly Mercuria Terminals Flushing B.V.
Vesta Terminal Tallinn OÌ, (Estonia) – formerly Eurodek Synergy OÌ
Vesta Terminal Antwerp N.V., (Belgium) – formerly Nafta (B) N.V.
Vesta Biofuels Brunsbüttel GmbH & Co. KG, (Germany) – formerly 3B Biofuels GmbH & Co. KG
Vesta Biofuels Amsterdam B.V., (The Netherlands) – formerly Mercuria BioEnergy B.V.
* It has upstream investments, including Orchard Petroleum in California.

TRAFIGURA
* Trafigura was founded by Frenchmen Claude Dauphin, Eric de Turkheim and Englishman Graham Sharp in 1993.
* Trafigura trades commodities, such as crude oil, refined products, non-ferrous, concentrates and refined metals and provides the ships and facilities to store and transport them.
* Trafigura had 2009 sales of $47 billion. It has about 1,900 staff.
*In June 2009, Trafigura announced it was looking to invest up to $400 million (€ 280 million) to double the storage capacity of its subsidiary Puma Energy, and to boost its trading operations in emerging markets such as Africa and Central America.
* A British media report in May said the company was planning a 1 billion pounds flotation of its industrial assets, though it would look to retain a minority stake in the listed group.
* In September last year, the company and lawyers representing about 30,000 Ivorians agreed a pre-trial settlement to end a class action suit which had accused it of causing illness by dumping toxic waste off Ivory coast in 2006.
* In December, it settled a libel case regarding the waste with British broadcaster the BBC.

VITOL GROUP
* Founded in 1966, Vitol had revenue of around $143 billion in 2009. It trades more than 5 million barrels per day of crude oil and refined products.
* Ian Taylor is the president and the CEO of the company.
* Besides crude oil, Vitol’s businesses include gasoline and naphtha, fuel oil, gas oil and jet, natural gas, coal, power, carbon emissions, shipping, derivatives, ethanol, non-ferrous metals and sugar.
* Vitol has 2,700 employees in its trading, upstream and storage businesses, and Arawak, an upstream group it owns.
* Vitol Tank Terminals International owns more than 5 million cubic metres of storage throughout the world and plans to increase this to more than 8 million cubic metres by 2012.
* Vitol has agreed to sell 50 percent of VTTI to Malaysia’s MISC Bhd, an international shipping line, for $735 million. The deal had yet to close as of July 21.
* Vitol has exploration and production assets which include operations in the Philippines, Congo, Ghana, Nigeria, Russia, Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan.
* In refining, Vitol owns and runs the 100,000 bpd Fujairah refinery in the United Arab Emirates. It bought the Bitumen plant in Antwerp, Belgium from Petroplus last year.

OTHERS
* Noble Group has a stake in Botlek Tank Terminal, new tank terminal in the Botlek area of Rotterdam. After completion of the final phase the total capacity will be around 500,000 m³ with 53 tanks. Noble Group is also a parent company of Noble Americas, which trades fuel in the U.S. as well as owns and operates the SemFuel terminal assets in the Midwest.
* Mabanaft is the oil trading arm of Marquard & Bahls group of companies, which also includes Oiltanking, the second largest independent storage provider in the world.
* North Sea Group is privately held and active in the Western European downstream market. It was created in 2009 through the merger of Van der Sluijs Group and FNR+ Holding. North Sea Group has a stake in Hydrocarbon Hotel, a marine terminal with a capacity of 140,000 m³ currently under construction in the port of Amsterdam.