Gunvor (company)
Gunvor Group Ltd. is registered in Nicosia on Cyprus oil trading company based in Amsterdam, Geneva and Singapore. Gunvor is active in the areas of trade, transport, storage and optimization of petroleum and petroleum products and also owns substantial interests in oil terminals, mixing and port facilities, oil pipelines and support projects.
Activities
The activity of the company consists essentially of " upstream " activities for the crude oil market supply through pipelines and oil tankers. Since 2007 and 2004 consist in Geneva each a branch. As one of the world's largest companies for trading with oil and gas Gunvor sells sponsorships from companies such as Surgutneftegaz, Rosneft and Gazprom outside Russia. In 2007, this amount should have amounted to 83 million tons. This Gunvor is behind Vitol, Glencore and Trafigura 's fourth largest oil trading company worldwide.
Background
The Swedish entrepreneur Torbjörn Törnqvist and his Russian partner Gennady Timchenko founded the company in 1997. Shortly before the entry into force of Western sanctions against Russia during the Krimkrise, which has also Timchenko was mentioned by name as a concerned, this sold in March 2014 its share of Torbjörn Törnqvist, which thus since then holds approximately 87 % of the shares; the remaining 13 % is held by senior staff.
In 2003 the company began operations in Geneva. According to the Financial Times Gunvor was until 2007 a " niche player " with focus on the export of Russian oil through Estonia, which is based on the know-how of the two founders in the oil business, on the Russian markets and transit traffic.
Gunvor -actuated also invest in oil storage, rail transport and port facilities and terminals and secured according to Tornqvists a " competitive advantage over its competitors ." According to the company's website Gunvor maintains relationships with a firm specializing in oil transport Railway Company ( Transoil ) and operates in leasing a tanker fleet, enabling the company to keep costs down and to distribute the profit margins. [Citation needed ]. Gunvor has its own shipping company, the Clearlake Shipping Ltd, about the year 2006 30 % of the Baltic crude oil ( 20.5 million tons ) were shipped. According Nefte Compass Russian oil exports grew by Gunvor in the period from February 2002 to February 2008 to sixteen times. The company controls 60 % of the volume, which is transported through Estonia, and 41 % of this amount transit through the port of Primorsk (Leningrad). The Group has made significant investments in equipment such as oil terminals and refineries; also at the oil terminal of Ust -Luga near St. Petersburg Gunvor is involved .. The annual throughput of this terminal is expected to reach 25 million metric tons. The total amount of investment from the start of construction in 2008 amounted to 800 million U.S. dollars. The new BPS -2 pipeline, which should not be passed over the Ukraine and Belarus, Unecha will connect via the Druzhba pipeline to Ust -Luga, where the oil is carried out via tankers. In September 2009, Gunvor invested with the acquisition of a 30 % interest in the Lagansky block in the Caspian Sea of Lundin Petroleum for the first time directly in the oil production. This oil field has proven reserves of more than 230 million barrel
2012 Gunvor acquired the refineries of the insolvent Petroplus in Antwerp and Ingolstadt.
Controversies
Gennady Timchenko is considered a friend of Vladimir Putin, who also worked after presentation of different media in the 1980s in the department of foreign espionage, the KGB. The numerous allegations that Timchenko have worked for the KGB, he and his former partner, the former intelligence official Andrei Pannikow always denied.
On 12 November 2007 the Russian political scientist Stanislav Belkovsky was in a internationally acclaimed interview with the daily newspaper Die Welt, that Putin should be involved by Timchenko to Gunvor. Putin, however, has repeatedly denied having to be associated with the rise of the company Gunvor or played any role.