Vitol

Vitol B.V.
Quick Facts
Type	Private
sector	Commodities
Headquarters (Benelux Organization)	Rotterdam, Netherlands
Year of Origin	1966
Emissions (All Scopes)	8,7 Megatons of CO2 (2020)
Total Revenue	140 billion USD (2020)
Stock Exchange	None, private
Key People	Russel Hardy (CEO)
Number of Employees	1500
Subsidiaries	Arawak Energy (UK) Cockett Marine Oil (UK) OVH Energy (Nigeria) Valt (Switzerland) Varo Energy (Switzerland) Ventspils Nafta Group (Latvia) Vitol Aviation (UK) Viva Energy (Australia) Vivo Energy (Netherlands) VPI Immingham (UK) VTTI (Netherlands)

Vitol B.V., stylized as Vitol, was founded in 1966 and been employee-owned since inception. Vitol is active in commodity trading, energy production, refinement and logistics. Vitol serves retail markets as well as wholesale traders. Vitol employs over 7000 service stations worldwide, being geographically represented on every continent. This includes countries under UN restrictions, wartorn countries and otherwise sketchy areas of business. Vitol employs around 1400 to 1500 people worldwide. Vitol is owned by circa 450 employees, with no one shareholder holding more than 5%. Many of these employees have gotten incredibly wealthy from granted dividend over the years, creating a special form of loyalty to the company. Vitol is a very private company, preferably operating under the radar. ‘’Whenever Vitol makes headlines, they are bad headlines’’. Vitol’s turnover in 2021 was 279 billion US Dollars worldwide. Little more than 1 billion dollars is invested in renewable projects. On a daily basis, over 7 million barrels of crude oil and products are traded by Vitol.

Company Structure

Vitol’s holding company is incorporated in the Netherlands where Vitol was founded in 1966. Since inception, Vitol has been employee-owned. Today it is owned by circa 450 employees, with no one shareholder holding more than 5%. ,

The legal name of Vitol is Vitol Netherlands Coöperatief U.A. This company is registered in Rotterdam since 2018 and has one daughter company, which is Vitol Holding B.V. This is a financial holding registered at the same address in Rotterdam. Both the mother and daughter company have an undisclosed natural person as functionary. Vitol Holding B.V. has nine daughter companies: Vitol Chemicals B.V., Vitol Insurance B.V., Vitol Africa B.V., Vitol FSU B.V., Vitol Refining Group B.V., Vitol Finance B.V., Vitol B.V., Vitol Tuban Finance B.V. and Vitol Renewables B.V. All of these companies are registered at the same address and employ little to no activities and therefore seem to be merely financial vehicles. Exception is Vitol B.V., that has 13 daughter companies. On this particular address 135 companies are registered, and all of them seem to have a link with one of the Vitol branches.

According to banktracker, besides the in Rotterdam registered companies and holdings, there are more subsidiaries. These are at least Cockett marine Oil (UK), OVH Energy (Nigeria), Valt (Switzerland), Varo Energy (Switzerland), Ventspils Nafta Group (Latvia), Vitol Aviation (UK), Viva Energy (Australia), Vivo Energy (Netherlands) and VPI Immingham (UK) Vitol is also coowner of Arawak Energy, active in Russia and several former soviet-countries, and VTTI. A joint venture between Vitol and a Malaysian company which owns giant storage tankers worldwide.

Board of Directors

Vitol is led by a board and management team, headed up by CEO, Russell Hardy.

According to a French online contact database, the following names form the executives of Vitol. However, Ian Taylor is on this website still mentioned as chairman. Vitol published in a statement that he died in 2020, so the information might be outdated.

Executive Board

Name	Function	Remuneration x1000 EUR
Russel Hardy	Chief Executive Officer	At least 6130

Board of Directors

Board of Directors

Name	Function	Remuneration x1000 EUR
Rick Evans	Chief Financial Officer & Treasury	At least 6130
Max Bulk	Chief Operations Officer	At least 6130
Pablo Galante Escobar	LNG Trading	At least 6130
Anara Kairbek	Human Resources	At least 6130
Ben Marshall	Member	At least 6130

Management Board

Management Board

Name	Function	Remuneration x1000 EUR
Robert Abbott	Treasury	At least 6130
Genevieve Arnold	Finance	At least 6130
Simon Hale	Investment	At least 6130
Steve Brann	Investment	At least 6130
Brian Jones	Operations	At least 6130

Supervisory Board

The supervisory board of Vitol is not mentioned on the website, nor can it be found online. To ensure governance, Vitol has a shareholder representative elected by non-board members who participates in board meetings and communicates decisions to the wider group.

According to Financial Times, regular remuneration of employees was 1,23 billion USD (1,08 billion EUR) in 2019. This was shared among 2480 employees. Vitol spend 2,2 billion USD (1,93 billion EUR) on buying back shares in the same year. In 2021 however, Vitol has paid a record 2,9 billion USD (2,54 billion EUR) to its executives and staff through share buybacks. Share buybacks is the main way of rewarding the 400 share-owning top employees of the company. This means that top executives and staff received a remuneration of at least 7,125 million USD (6,13 million EUR) each in 2021.

Accountant

As there are no publicly available annual reports or financial statements, it is not possible to determine the accountant of Vitol. It is however mentioned in the ESG report of Vitol that the emission data is calculated by PwC (formally known as PricewaterhouseCoopers).

Main Activities

Vitol’s core business is trading energy products such as crude oil, petroleum products, LNG, natural gas, LPG, power, renewable credits and other environmental products such as carbon credits. Vitol is active in commodity trading, energy production, refinement and logistics. Vitol serves retail markets as well as wholesale traders. The activities of Vitol are spread out over a complex array of companies, subsidiaries, daughter companies and holdings.

Government

Vitol did not receive NOW support during corona times. Vitol does not have royal status. Vitol has reportedly invested more than a billion USD in renewable energy. In comparison, their yearly revenue was 140 billion USD in 2020.

Paris Agreement until Today

There is no information on environmental or emission developments since 2015. For many topics regarding to emissions, Vitol only started reporting them in 2020 or 2021 for the first time. It is however known that over 11 billion USD have been spend on share buybacks since 2015.

Financial Results since 2015

This table shows the financial data of Vitol since 2015. Vitol is incredibly wealthy and has plenty of money to make their operations more sustainable.

Financial situation

Year	Revenue	Profit	Dividend
2015	168 billion USD	1,6 billion USD	0,8 billion USD
2016	152 billion USD	2,1 billion USD	1,1 billion USD
2017	181 billion USD	1,5 billion USD	1,6 billion USD
2018	231 billion USD	1,7 billion USD	1 billion USD
2019	225 billion USD	2,4 billion USD	2,3 billion USD
2020	140 billion USD	3,2 billion USD	2,0 billion USD
2021	279 billion USD	4 billion USD	2,9 billion USD

Vitol has paid its partners over 19 billion in the past 17 years.

Scandals and controversies

In 2001, an investigation by The Observer revealed that in 1995 Vitol signed a deal with a Serbian company, Orion, to sell thousands of tonnes of oil to the former Yugoslavia. Bob Finch, director of Vitol, paid $1 million to the Serbian war criminal Arkan, thereby using him as a 'fixer' to sort out a secret oil deal to supply Slobodan Milosevic's Serbia with fuel.

Current Emissions

According to the first Environmental, Social and Governance report of Vitol, in 2020 the emissions in all scopes were 8,7 mtonnes in 2020, contrasting 7,9 mtonnes in 2019. It is being stated that the scope 3 emissions are preliminary. Vitol reports a ‘’proportional share’’ of downstream emissions of externally sold fossil fuels. This seems unlikely, seen that the number of barrels traded is over 8 million a day.

Vitol recognises the importance of reporting scope 3 emissions in full, but more time is needed to improve the accuracy of our data set. Full scope 3 data will be reported for the categories outlined in Table 1 in the 2021 ESG report.

Climate Plans

Vitol’s portfolio of trading products and energy investments is evolving to include more transitional or ‘new energy’ green elements. However, no targets are given.

Vitol’s approach to climate change and the energy transition is the following:

• (1) Improving footprint accuracy and establishing incentives
• (2) Reducing Vitol’s GHG footprint
• (3) Growing low-carbon/ green opportunities
• (4) Reporting and communicating

No targets on CO2 emissions for 2030 or 2050 are found in the public reports of Vitol.

Response to Milieudefensie's Campaign

On April 13, Vitol replied to Milieudefensie's letter stating that the company is "mindful of the global challenges facing the environment and the need for a transition to cleaner forms of energy". Attached to their letter, they sent their Environmental, Social and Governance Report 2021 (ESG Report 2021) to show the "significant investments in energy transition related projects" the company makes and the steps Vitol takes to reduce its own GHG footprint. Vitol mentions that they have set targets to identify its GHG footprint more accurately to be able to reduce the emissions of its operations where possible. The company further refers to their awareness of the societal importance of energy availability and security, especially in light of the "increasing global energy demand and the geopolitical forces that impact energy markets". Lastly, Vitol mentions that they regularly interact with government and regulatory agencies with a view to providing input on policy related decisions and that they believe that law aimed at tackling climate change should be made by governments "following informed consultation with relevant stakeholders rather than being developed on an ad hoc basis" to ensure that these laws are clear, workable, enforceable, and applied in a uniform manner.

Due Diligence

Keep the broader context in mind. Is the company integer when it comes to deforestation, palm oil, biodiversity, human rights etc etc? Be critical in the sources used here.

Conclusion

Vitol is a leading company in its field. It has a fairly unique governance and ownership structure. Due to its private nature, not much is known about Vitol. Vitol is not listed on a stock exchange and Vitol does not publish annual reports. Despite all the claims Vitol makes, less than 0,75% of their annual revenu is invested in renewable projects. Vitol has been discredited in the press many times in the recent past. This was due to business done with dictators, through dubious schemes or through bribery.

It is suspected that the reported emissions of Vitol are not in line with their traded volumes, and their climate plans are vague and without concrete numerical targets.Targets for 2030 and 2050 are lacking altogether. Vitol is therefore not in line with the goals from the Paris Agreemeent of 2015.