A look at the traders behind the China-Ecuador-U.S. oil triangle

[Zorro]

Ecuador's Socialist President Rafael Correa has often railed against allowing private trading firms to control the country's oil shipments, a top source of export revenue. Soon after his election in 2006, Correa pledged to cut out middlemen.

But on his watch, the opposite has happened. As the OPEC country committed to selling the bulk of its export crude to Chinese state-owned firms, a little-known Swiss trading house and its business partners have secured a role as intermediaries in the South American country's oil trade.

Internal shipping schedules from state-owned oil firm PetroEcuador show that PetroChina Co Ltd. - the main buyer of Ecuador's crude - engaged a small Hong Kong-based firm named Ursa Shipping Ltd to help ship the oil. Together, they handled around two-thirds of the 33 million barrels of oil Ecuador exported during the second quarter, the schedules indicate. Around 70 percent of their shipments were sent to the United States directly or to PanPac, an area offshore Panama where oil cargoes are often loaded onto U.S.-bound vessels.

Market sources say Ursa acts as a shipper for Geneva-based oil trading firm Taurus Petroleum, whose mainstay business a decade ago was selling Iraqi crude under U.N.'s oil-for-food program. For the past four years, Taurus has played a key role selling Ecuador's oil along the U.S. West Coast. According to a Reuters analysis of U.S. oil import data gathered by port intelligence group PIERS, Taurus's shipments accounted for nearly 10 percent of California's oil imports in the first nine months of 2013.

http://news.yahoo.com/look-traders-behind-china-ecuador-u-oil-triangle-120306473--finance.html

[bemildred]

1. This is a weird argument, a stable trading partner is the goal, not an imposition.

They used to ship it all to Uncle Sugar. China is a lot less likely to invade or destabilize you if they don't get their way too.