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Bright future Katherine Si interviews Dr Sit Kwong Lam, chairman of Brightoil, for this issue’s cover story
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rightoil has come a long way in a short amount of time, from niche bunker activities to global oil player. The company is now one of China’s premier marine bunkering service providers, also selling overseas, as well as a developer of oil and gas fields and last but not least a significant shipowner with a fleet of VLCCs to go alongside its increasing number of bunker barges. “China will continue its market-oriented reform and maintain a long-term healthy development of its economy, while its urbanisation development approach will provide significant potential for long-term growth of its domestic consumers and industrial demand, creating substantial possibilities for higher energy demand,” maintains Brightoil’s chairman Dr Sit Kwong Lam. Currently, the company is focusing more of its efforts on growing its marine fuel oil storage and terminal business in China, constructing a 3.16m cu m oil storage and terminal facility on Waidiao island in the Zhoushan archipelago and another 7.19m cu m oil storage facility and terminal on Changxing island off Dalian. Combined with its existing Shenzhen facility Brightoil now owns Chinese oil storage depots with a total volume of 15m tons. It also has leased areas in Ningbo, Qingdao and Shanghai. Brightoil has become one of the bestknown names in Asian bunkering. It has been among the top three suppliers measured by volume in China and Singapore for the last few years.
The upstream sector will be the major driver for Brightoil’s future growth Not content with merely being a bunker player, Sit has taken Brightoil into other rungs of the oil supply chain. The international trading and bunkering division of the company has added a new crude origination resource in the US to allow the crude trading bench to source
competitively valued suppliers in Latin America for arbitrage sale into North Asia, however, expansion plans in Europe have been temporary held off until market conditions improve. To aid this global oil push Brightoil has built up its own fleet of tankers. Last year it took on the first of what now stands at five Hyundai-built VLCCs. The VLCCs go alongside Brightoil’s other vessels, a very rapidly growing set of bunker barges, with 15 added this year alone. Then there is Sit’s biggest change in focus – getting involved in oil and gas exploration and development. The Dina 1 gas field in Xinjiang has been generating remarkable cash inflow to the group, while the Tuzi gas field development plan has been approved by the National Development and Reform Commission and is expected to be officially commissioned shortly. “We will continue to further develop oil and gas fields to deploy our strategy with a focus on upstream business,” says Sit, adding: “The upstream sector will be the major driver for Brightoil’s future growth and value adding. Looking ahead, demand for oil and gas resources in China will remain strong and an upward adjustment of the natural gas price is expected to continue in the future.”
Even though the financial performance was severely impacted in the first half of the 2013 financial year, “we adjusted our business strategies and risk control measures according to different markets and business environments and managed to achieve significant improvement in operating results,” says Sit. “We have every confidence that the scalable and global development of our core businesses, the upstream business in particular, will lay a solid foundation for Brightoil to become a renowned international energy conglomerate,” Sit concludes.
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BRIGHTOIL
HONG KONG-BASED BRIGHTOIL is principally engaged in bunker trading, oil storage and terminal facilities, marine transportation as well as a growing focus on upstream. Fleet includes five new VLCCs.
SINOSHIP winter 2013
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