25 August 2011

Trafigura’s nice little earner

Trafigura, the oil world’s cheeky chappies, have discovered an new way to make a nice little earner. This time it is by supplying gasoline to the peaceful and strictly non-violent democracy of Syria
According to Euronews oil market dealers confirmed that a Syrian government tender on behalf of state oil company Sytrol for gasoline has been picked up by our loveable rogues Trafigura and Valso itol. Syria exports crude oil, but does not have the refining capacity to meet its domestic needs and relies on petrol imports.

This came as US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called for an international boycott of Syrian oil and gas products, and sanctions against its oil and gas industries as the best way of putting pressure on the regime to stop its murderous repression of protests there.

Vitol and Trafigura will most likely source the gasoline from Mediterranean refineries in Italy, Spain, or France.

In April this year Vitol was the first company to organise the sale of Libyan oil on behalf of its rebel movement, freighting about 1 million barrels lying idle in Singapore to US refiner Tesoro.

Trafigura, on the other hand, has regularly featured in allegations of corruption and malpractice since its creation in 1993. These include being the first company contracted to sell oil produced in Sudan in 1999, a year after the US bombed Khartoum and had declared the country a state sponsor of terrorism, barring all US companies from doing business with the regime.

Trafigura was also named in the Iraq Oil-for-Food Scandal , and was convicted in Amsterdam in 2010 for illegally dumping toxic waste in Ivory Coast and fined 1 million euros, 2006 Côte d’Ivoire toxic waste dump , which a September 2009 UN report says led to 108,000 people seeking hospital treatment.

In the same year Trafigura tried to prevent reporting of a question in the UK parliament of the Ivory Coast affair in “The Guardian” newspaper by using a “super-injunction” gagging order, and brought a libel suit against the BBC’s “Newsnight” programme for their reporting on the story.

In February this year the public prosecutor in the Netherlands opened an inquiry into allegations Trafigura paid bribes to a leading politician in Jamaica.

I know Trafigura are not doing anything illegal but they have a track record of being amoral bastards in the pursuit of filthy lucre. It just seems that Trafigura’s lucre is particularly filthy.

Perhaps a few months scrubbing one of their tankers by had might change the minds of a few of Trafigura’s execs…

4 comments:

Francis Sedgemore said...

Cosmic injunction descending on the head of one Shaun P Downey, Esq., in 3, 2, 1...

jams o donnell said...

Ah this is the one where I am fired into a black hole for mentioning Trafigura isn't it?

Oh Shit!!!!

SnoopyTheGoon said...

Nah, please continue. May the ray of light enter the Trafigura-infested darkness.

jams o donnell said...

I will continue of course mon ami!