Oil giant Saudi Aramco invests $ 5 million in blockchain company Vakt, blockchain becomes an important part of the oil trade

According to a Reuters report on January 28, Saudi Arabia's state-owned oil giant Saudi Aramco has bought a blockchain-based oil trading company Vakt.

Image source: Pixabay

According to Vakt's press release, Saudi Aramco's energy venture capital unit has purchased $ 5 million in new shares of the company. This investment will be used to develop the platform, with a focus on expanding into the Asian market.

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In addition to investment, the oil giant's trading subsidiary Aramco Trading will also use the Vakt platform. The platform is currently operating in the North Sea Brent, Forties, Oseberg, Ekofisk, and Troll crude oil markets, and it has been reported that it has a high share. Aramco Trading has added its transaction volume to this blockchain-based platform.

The potential to streamline and modernize the oil trade

The Vakt platform focuses on post-trade processing of physical energy transactions. By eliminating paper-based processes and manual accounting operations, it provides a smooth process from trade entry to settlement. Hans Middelthon, Managing Director of SAEV Europe said:

"Vakt has demonstrated the potential of their platform to digitize currently very manual processes."

Vakt believes that the use of blockchain can ensure the "single truth" of buyers and sellers, which are stored in an immutable distributed ledger.

Vakt launched its trading platform in December 2018, initially only for the North Sea market. The company was founded in 2017 by a consortium of industry leaders including Shell and BP, and they were also the first users of the platform.

Since then, the platform has joined more industry giants such as Chevron, Total and India's Reliance Industries.

Saudi Aramco, the world's most productive oil company, has previously invested in a number of blockchain companies through its venture capital subsidiary. In May 2019, the oil giant participated in a US $ 6 million funding round from US blockchain startup Data Gumbo Corp.

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