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Our supply and trading activities are the commercial face of BP, and the people and systems within it work closely with our upstream and downstream businesses. They enhance BP’s value through the application of distinctive supply, trading, risk management and information technology skills – underpinned by a world-class control infrastructure.
We trade a varied range of products including crude oil, natural gas, liquefied natural gas, power and currencies. The supply and trading business completes some 550,000 transactions and serves more than 12,000 customers across some 140 countries in a year.
In addition to trading physical commodities, we are active in the financial markets, and provide energy price risk management and hedging services for our customers. Because of our access to physical assets, BP’s global trading activity generates a huge amount of information that sets us apart from other companies. Every second, our servers crunch over 157 trillion independent calculations, equivalent to the processing power of 100,000 home PCs.
Customers in 140 countries*
3,000 people in supply and trading business*
4 billion barrels of crude traded annually equivalent to 20% global traded oil*
12,000 supply and trading customers worldwide*
*BP internal data
How we apply our expertise
Getting BP’s oil, gas and refined products to the people and businesses who need them, wherever they may be in the world, is a complex job.
We create long-term value from our assets by managing the flow of these commodities. We bring our specialized knowledge of safe, reliable energy production and management of production assets, together with our experience of global markets, to create a single commercial face to the world’s traded markets.
Our supply and trading teams calculate how much oil and gas from BP’s various production platforms and distribution terminals should go to each of our refineries to be turned into useful products. As products leave the refinery, we ask three questions are asked. Who wants to buy them? Where do they need to go? And how will we get them there?
The global trade in energy resources and oil-based products is complex and sophisticated – prices change constantly; so does demand.
This means activity on our trading floors is always brisk. Traders monitor market information continuously and talk to brokers, refinery staff and the people based in our production operations. They have to be ready to make sound business decisions at a moment’s notice.
