Case Studies

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• BP Houston
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• BP Oil International
• BP Singapore
• Bradley Enterprises
• Bunker Holding
• Cable and Alloys
• Cargill International Trading
• Cathay Petroleum International
• Ceecon Energy Oil & Gas
• Chevron Global
• Cirrus Oil Services
• Cockett Marine Oil
• Columbus Stainless
• ConocoPhillips Limited
• Dan Bunkering
• Danaher Oil Company
• Duport Marine
• ENOI S.p.A.
• Essar Oil Limited
• ExxonMobil Asia Pacific
• ExxonMobil Marine Limited
• Gadiv Petrochemical Industries
• Gas City Wholesale
• Gulf Petrol Supplies
• Hess Energy Trading Company
• Hin Leong Trading
• Honeywell Oil & Gas
• Itochu Petroleum Co
• JP Morgan Chase Bank
• Koch
• Kuo Oil Singapore
• Lemvig oil Trading S.A.
• Linetrale Oil Supply & Trading Co
• Lukoil Asia Pacific
• Lukoil Bulgaria
• Lukoil Pan-Americas
• Mabanaft
• Marathon Oil Sands
• Mira Energy Brokerage
• Petrobras Brazil
• Petrobras Singapore
• Phibro
• Pilot Travel Centers
• Plains All American Pipeline
• Salavatnefteorgsintez
• Samsung Corporation
• Sasol Trading International
• Scandinavian Tank Storage
• Setana Oil Limited
• Shell Company of Thailand
• Shell Trading North America
• Sims Metal Management Asia
• Sonangol
• Sumitomo Corporation
• TNK-BP
• Total Gas & Power North America
• Tradehouse KazMunayGaz
• Verbeke Bunkering NV
• Vitol S.A. Rotterdam Branch

Customer Success Stories

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Lightning Fast Deployment

Client: Linetrale

Activities: Linetrale has steadily grown to become one Nigeria's leading oil trading companies. Its main geographical area of business is Nigeria, with rapidly developing initiatives in the supply and trading business in West Africa including Abidjan, Republic of Benin, Cameroon, Liberia, Congo and Angola.

Challenge: Valued Aspect client Linetrale experienced years of steady growth that eventually began to strain the efficiencies of its operation. Management knew it was time to embrace an electronic environment that could easily be expanded in parallel with business growth. Linetrale needed to be able to capture and manage physical trades between internal entities and external counterparties, as well as manage paper trades to hedge its physical activity. There were other challenges the company faced that an energy trading system would solve. Request Complete Case Study to find out how AspectCTRM is helping this growing oil trading operation to achieve optimum financial success.

Solution: AspectCTRM for real-time P&L, risk and positions reporting; counterparty credit risk management; transparent trade management and integration with existing back-office.

“AspectCTRM was installed and working for us so fast – quickly enabling us to get a real-time understanding of profit and loss, exposures, price movements in the markets and how we can better manage risk. It’s a cornerstone of our plans to grow our presence in neighboring states such as Abidjan(CIV), Ghana, Republic of Benin, Cameroon, Liberia, Congo and Angola.” Peter Malcolm King, Linetrale Business Development & Strategy Manager

Long-Time Loyal Partnership

Client: TNK-BP (TNK-BP Logo)

Activities: TNK-BP is Russia's third largest oil company and among the world's top 10 private-sector oil producers. The company employs more than 100,000 personnel operating six refineries in Russia and the Ukraine, and markets product through 2,200 retail stations operating under TNK and BP brands. In 2003 the company produced net sales over USD$10 billion, and totaled 1.276 million barrels per day in crude oil production. BP purchased 50% of TNK in 2003, creating TNK-BP. TNK-BP lists Aspect in its corporate objectives as one of the main components in its strategy to maximize exports, optimize sales and logistics, and achieve enhanced efficiencies and transparency for domestic and international markets. Many challenges were uncovered during an initial business process analysis conducted jointly by OILspace, now Aspect Enterprise Solutions, and TNK-BP.

Challenge: TNK-BP's aggressive corporate strategy for growth called for the need to deploy leading technology that would centralize activities and standardize data and processes. This would create an efficient two-way flow of information among its clients, internal departments and management. The system envisioned would pave the way for effective forecasting, planning, informed decision-making and efficient resource allocation. Ultimately achieving its long-term sustained profitability plan would require TNK-BP to optimize its processes at every part of the value chain. Compared to the rest of the world, Russia's infrastructure for moving product is one of the most complex and expensive. To succeed, the company would need to link its entire operation and overcome difficulties in its vast logistics program. All units would need to work together in a visible, collaborative environment, simultaneously tracking railroad deliveries, port operations and financial activities. TNK-BP knew that accurate and timely management information would establish a competitive advantage over its domestic rivals and provide a roadmap to expansion. Management also realized how vital it was to modernize the company's accounting systems and practices. They understood the importance of delivering faster, and more accurate and comprehensive financial information for internal and external reporting, and compliance with International Accounting Standards (IAS).

Solution: Aspect clients vary in their requirements from needing only one Aspect component, such as Risk Management for sophisticated risk analysis, to full-scale integration of all components. For TNK-BP, building upon several Aspect components to create a full-scale supply chain was deemed necessary because of the many varied solutions it required. In just the first few months, new tools were deployed to address immediate challenges. In approximately one year, several components were configured and deployed along with complete integration of the Energy Service Bus (ESB). The ESB serves as the technology backbone for real-time processing and continued software integration via Web Services. It also allows TNK-BP to continue to build on its supply chain with software from Aspect or other vendors. Energy companies of all sizes are embracing this flexible, modular approach to solving problems and capturing immediate ROI through swift, controlled, low-risk deployment.

“Control and transparency are the keys to any successful trading operation. Here are the building blocks without which one cannot establish proper corporate governance and best practices. When I joined TNK one of my first priorities was to implement a new system of operations control through AspectCTRM, which now, in my opinion, is the besting the market. It allows tracking of movements at any time; what was sold, who the seller and buyer were, and what the market situation was at that moment, and all this market-to-market. Transparency is one of the keys to making the right decisions, absolutely vital in a competitive market in which one tries continuously to optimize results.” Jonathan Kollek, VP of Sales, Trading and Logistics, TNK-BP

Real-Time Risk & Trade Management

Client: Global Trading Firm

Activities: With offices in North, Central & South America; Europe, Africa, Asia and Australia this AspectCTRM client is one of the world’s largest trading firms. Headquartered in London, its annual turnover is in excess of USD$12 billion. Its primary trading businesses are the supply and offtake of petroleum products, natural gas, and liquified natural gas (LNG). Among the company’s diversified goals is to work with customers and suppliers to minimize commodity price exposure to ensure stable margins and avoid speculative risk.

Challenge: Today, trading companies face myriad risks associated with oil price volatility, transportation challenges, managing specifications and multiple commodities by geography and harnessing opportunities through timely internal and external communications. This company needed a real-time solution for traders and risk managers to project profit and loss on current and forward positions associated with both physical and financial deals. The solution needed to be both simple to use and sophisticated in its functionality.

Solution: The company has an excellent internally developed transaction fulfillment system, however, as the business grew rapidly in the last few years and the volume of trades increased, the need for a company-wide risk management and P&L system became a management priority. It was able to leverage its existing system for order management, fulfillment and logistics and wished to retain as much of its current infrastructure as possible to minimize disruption to working practices as well as training, software licenses and hardware costs. Their internally developed system was designed in the mid-nineties to fulfill back-office requirements. It’s a client-server based system and therefore was inherently unscalable and unable to quickly meet the growing functionality requirements of the business. They considered developing their own risk management system, however the client-server model would require an extensive VPN rollout, further terminal installation, costly network maintenance and was ultimately considered to be too great a risk. They also tested many risk management software programs. For this client, the AspectCTRM Risk Management component and the Profit & Loss feature set of the AspectCTRM Transaction Management component were necessary to solve the proposed challenges. In less than one year, components were configured and deployed along with complete integration. It also allows this client the ability to continue to build on its supply chain with software from Aspect Enterprise Solutions or other vendors. Energy companies of all sizes are embracing this flexible, component approach to solving problems and capturing immediate ROI through swift, controlled, low-risk deployment.

“None of the other software packages accurately reflected our established business protocols, the cost of customization and licensing were significant and the risk of being locked-in to a vendor’s proprietary made us keen to find an alternative solution.” Client

Leveraging Aggregated Market Data

Client: Mabanaft

Activities: The largest independent distributor of oil products in Germany with marketing activities in the UK, Switzerland, Hungary, and Austria. Active products trader in northwest European market with independent storage facilities. U.S. activities center around storage and distribution at a New Haven Connecticut cargo terminal with expansion plans for the Atlantic Basin cargo, and local barge and pipeline markets.

Challenge: Mabanaft was expanding its U.S. marketing activities, opening a new office in Connecticut and needed reliable, real-time and historical market data to forecast and execute trades.

Solution: Mabanaft’s sister companies, Oiltanking, a leading global provider of storage and logistics for petroleum and petrochemicals, and Matrix Marine Fuels, a bunker supplier in the Gulf of Mexico, highly recommended OILwatch, now known as AspectDSC Oil. Both are subscribers and understand the competitive economical advantages of using AspectDSC for market data. After evaluating other market data providers, abanaft found that AspectDSC matched up in terms of analytical tools and important global price benchmarks from industry sources such as Platts, NYMEX, ICE and Dow Jones. But in terms of economics Aspect provided tremendous savings over all others. Another important factor in the decision was its convenient Internet access. This office is remote from its Houston an overseas offices, so not having to allocate IT resources to keep it running provided even greater benefits and savings.

“We decided to go with AspectDSC because it offers information services and analytical tools that equal the competition at a substantially lower cost. Additionally, AspectDSC offers the flexibility of different service levels. The service and technical support have been first rate. AspectDSC offers everything we need for success.” Managing Director, Mabanaft

Energy Trading Education

Client: City University, London – Cass Business School. Energy Trade and Finance course for MSC students.

Activities: Cass Business School, recently named top institution in London for undergraduate business and management studies by the Guardian newspaper, coaches MSc students on the institution's Energy Trade and Finance course. It is believed to be the only course of its kind in the world where energy traders can learn their craft prior to employment.

Challenge: The trading element of the MSc course is the brainchild of energy specialist Charles Daly of Channoil Consulting who also introduced the Aspect applications. "The objective was simple: create students who could go on directly to join a trading company armed with the practical knowledge they'd need to become traders. The Aspect applications represent the current state of the art in that business and give the students invaluable, hands-on experience." Students gain this experience during a five-week trading simulation during which they learn the gas, oil and electricity markets and how they work.

Solution: Aspect has given its AspectCTRM and AspectDSC applications free of charge to City University's Cass Business School. AspectCTRM is a powerful energy trade risk management solution which students use for trade capture, position keeping and exposure tracking. At the same time AspectDSC provides students with real-time market prices and data together with decision support tools.

"Students get a real insight into the business, learn new skills and have fun while they're doing it," says Daly. "The Aspect tools are intuitive, easy to ease and highly interactive. Also it's very probable that when students go on to get jobs as traders they'll be using Aspect for real with their employers." Charles Daly, Channoil Consulting