Oil
Significant talent moves
Talent search and competitive intelligence specialists
Here is a summary of some of the moves that have been taking place in the oil space in recent months. Dutch group Pitpoint Clean Fuels has brought in John Wilson from parent group Total to be CEO. He arrives after being MD of Total UK for the past four years. He has also managed its retail lubricants and aviation fuel offshoot, headed fuel oil marketing for Total’s retail/marketing division and was Specialties Director for sales of Total Belgium of products including marine fuel and bitumen. Pitpoint was acquired by Total Group in 2017.
Tauber Oil Company, a wholesale marketer of petroleum and petrochemical products, has added Robert Goldsworthy as Vice President Crude Oil Marketing. Robert moved to Tauber Oil from Chevron, where he spent 12 years in analyst, operations and crude trading positions.
Angus Littleford, previously a trader at World Fuel Services in London, has moved to Trafigura in Geneva where he will take on a similar position.
Chevron in Houston welcomes Klay Allen as NGL Trader, following his move from EDF Trading where he headed the NGL & Olefin trading team for North America. Klay previously held positions at Castleton Commodities, Goldman Sachs and Barclays.
*Based on moves tracked by Commodity Appointments in last 12 months.
*Based on moves tracked by Commodity Appointments in last 12 months.
Elias Coutya is SOCAR Trading’s new products trader in Geneva. Most recently, Elias worked in Prax’s middle distillates trading team, covering ARA Barges and UK cargoes trading, paper trading and FX hedging.
David Martinez has been made Senior Director-Refined Products by S&P Global Platts. After experience as a power market analyst with Wood Mackenzie, Deutsche Bank and Merrill Lynch, David switched to Bloomberg in 2013 --- taking business manager positions in power and gas, data ontology and metals market activities.
Two U.S. oil traders on the move: Chris Clyburn to Chevron from Houston-based oil and gas exploration/production company Par Pacific Holdings and Walker Weston from Castleton Commodities International to Vitol. Chris has worked with Associated Energy and Fuelco Energy, trading crude and also intermediate and finished products. He becomes a Crude Oil Trader for Chevron. Walker can point to trader or scheduler spells with Geneva Trading, Gavilon and Repsol. He’s now part of Vitol’s Houston trading team.
New Bridge Street in London is the address of Oil Brokerage Ltd and therefore the new location for Ben Davies following his recruitment as Broker-Middle Distillates & Fuel Oil. Ben began in process engineering with Chevron UK and progressed to production economist before heading to Glencore Grain in order to trade biodiesel and glycerine. For the last four years he’s been a biodiesel trader with ADM.
Maryro Mendez’ newest step is to Wood Mackenzie in London and the role of Research Director and Head of Refining & Assets, Global Oils and Natural Gas Liquids. It brings her from Rotterdam, where she was Technical Manager at Gunvor Petroleum. Among previous positions in oil, she was a trader of crude for Irving Oil in Canada, a senior process engineer for the same company, and a coordinator of operations for both BP and Petroplus.
Formerly a fuel oil trader at Alvari, Alex Yim has switched to the commodity brokerage arm of private Singapore company Cacheco as Trading Manager. In his pre-Alvari days Alex was Asia-Pacific Regional Manager for lubricants and bunker group Unimarine.
An ex-head of oil trading operations for Mercuria, Mike Shaw, is now back in Geneva as Rosneft Trading’s Head of Operations --- a post he also filled at his most recent employer Maddox in Dubai. With Milio International previously, also in the UAE, he had been Director of Operations.
Equinor’s Singapore office has brought in Motoki Iida as Senior Trading Manager, responsible for running the middle distillate and feedstock business in an area stretching from the Suez Canal into Asia-Pacific countries. Motoki was previously trading middle distillates in Asia for the group now known as GP Global, the former Gulf Petroleum, and for Litasco/Lukoil.
Dario Zuccarini is promoted by Eni T&S in London to Head of Global Middle Distillates/Heavies and Specialities Trading, from being the head of global derivatives and multi-commodity trading. He joined the trading/shipping arm following Eni group appointments dating back to 2008, which included heading market analysis for oil and products.
After more than nine years with Eni T&S, Ronn Harvey Ong is now in Copenhagen to be a Fuel Oil Trader for Maersk Oil Trading. While at Eni, Ronn moved up from analyst roles to trade fuel oil at the company’s London office.
Congratulations to Andrea Valerio on becoming Executive Director at Castleton Commodities International. It keeps Andrea in Connecticut, where he’s worked as an Eni team leader, a Noble Group MD in oil liquids/ethanol and head of the oxygenates trading desk for Mercuria Energy Trading.
Socar Trading’s choice for Senior Trading Operator-Crude and Products in Geneva is Luc Chevallier. He has been with Total Switzerland since 2015, as an operator in products shipping and fleet bunker purchaser. Before that he was Mercuria’s Senior Operator in crude oil trading. Socar makes Anibal Rodriguez its Group Head of Market Risk in Geneva. Anibal has been heading risk management for Philia since 2016. Previous to this he had oil risk responsibilities first for RWE and latterly in the EMEA region for Noble Group.
The second half of 2019 finds Petros Tratskas at the Petroineos trading and refining joint venture between Ineos and PetroChina London. He becomes a Senior Manager in business development, charged with keeping a particular eye on the crude oil markets in Europe and North and West Africa. In 2002 Petros went to Shell for analyst and advisory jobs before being promoted to Senior Trader-Crude Oil in 2007. He then worked for Eni T&S managing crude oil origination. Lingfeng Jiang has also moved to Petroineos, to become their Deputy General Manager of Crude Trading. He previously held a crude oil trader position at Petrochina, after being transferred to London from their Beijing office.
William Claeyssens de Tena is now a trading analyst for Chevron in London, having joined from the crude oil team at UK-based Energy Aspects. The team had already been extended earlier in the year with the arrival of another trading analyst, Rebeka Žuborová, from Oldendorff Carriers in Germany.
Citadel’s newest crude oil analyst Nicholas Ghilardi graduated in engineering physics at the University of Illinois-Urbana Champaign and joined BP in Chicago soon after. Initial placements in foreign exchange and treasury trading led to gasoline trade analyst roles in the company’s trader development programme and now to his appointment by Citadel.
Finally, Trafigura’s choice for Co-Global Head LPG is Patricio Norris, promoting him from joint leader of the company’s oil and gas interests in Latin America. It means a move for Patricio from Montevideo back to Geneva, where he had worked for Trafigura as a senior LPG trader until 2017.
WE’RE RUNNING A SURVEY TO FIND POSSIBLE WAYS TO IMPROVE THE BASIS OF REMUNERATION FOR TRADING-TEAM ANALYSTS AND STRATEGISTS.
This is merely a snapshot of some of the recent people moves and associated trends observed by our Oil research team at Commodity.
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