The British business daily’s Global Commodities Summit Financial Times was held, as every year, under the gold of Beau-Rivage, a historic palace in Lausanne, from April 8 to 10. The leaders of the most powerful extractive companies on the planet and the major commodity traders celebrated their insolent health. They have never looked so good.
Among them, the trading company Trafigura, registered in Singapore but whose historic headquarters is in Switzerland, announced Thursday April 11 that it is entering into exclusive negotiations with the French branch of ExxonMobil with a view to acquiring, for an amount not specified, the Fos-sur-Mer refinery and the oil terminals of Toulouse and Villette-de-Vienne (Isère). An operation carried out through a consortium called Rhône Energies, which associates Trafigura with the American refinery operator Entara. The press release announcing the operation specifies that “Trafigura should enter into an exclusive crude oil supply and offtake agreement for a minimum of ten years (…). Rhône Energies would also agree to continue to supply Esso in the region. »
It is not a minor player in the oil trade that sets a foot in French oil infrastructure. THE Financial Times put it in this “handful of private companies that help form the backbone of the global economy, transporting everything from oil and gas to metals and electricity around the world”. The company led by Australian Jeremy Weir will trade 5.5 million barrels per day in 2023, equivalent to the oil demand of the United Kingdom, France and Germany combined. It sold 100 million tonnes of raw materials that same year and reached unprecedented heights during its last financial year, ending at the end of September 2023: 244 billion in turnover, for a net profit of 7.4 billion. A jackpot, which will mainly be shared by the 1,300 senior executives, both employees and shareholders of this unlisted company.
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“We can measure the effect of these marvelous performances in the canton of Geneva, says Adria Budry Carbo of the Swiss NGO Public Eye, which monitors this sector which is poorly regulated by the Swiss authorities. Purchases of villas worth several tens of millions by Trafigura traders are increasing in the upscale neighborhoods of the Left Bank. » According to certain indiscretions, these real estate acquisitions would have reached more than 260 million Swiss francs (267 million euros) in 2023.
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