HOUSTON -- Motiva Enterprises LLC—owned equally by affiliates of Saudi Aramco and Shell Oil Co.—has announced its intention to form a petroleum products supply and trading organization for transport fuels and refinery intermediates separate from Shell.
Based in Houston, Motiva refines, distributes and markets petroleum products. With three refineries in the U.S. Gulf Coast region, Motiva has a combined capacity of more than 1.1 million barrels per day. The company's marketing operations support a network of approximately 8,300 Shell-branded gas stations in the eastern and southern United States.
"Bringing our trading operations in-house is an exciting opportunity for Motiva," said Todd Fredin, vice president of supply, trading and logistics for Motiva. "This is a natural progression of our business as we seek to connect more closely with the market through direct relationships with customers and counterparties."
The move toward in-house trading began in late 2014 when Motiva began negotiating term contracts for its gasoline and diesel products. The company intends to expand this focus to include all trading activities for transport fuels and refinery intermediates beginning Jan. 1, 2016.
Motiva said it will still rely on Shell to trade crude oil.
"Seeking and implementing opportunities to enable Motiva to better see, call and capture the market supports our ultimate goal of becoming the safest and most profitable downstream business in the United States," said Dan Romasko, president and CEO. "We value our relationship with our owner companies, who have supported us significantly over the years. With this change, we hope to provide greater value to them through more active participation in the market."
The company will be seeking outside talent to fill several positions within the new trading organization to supplement its current capabilities, it added.
Motiva has moved out of Shell's downtown Houston building and into its own office two blocks away, and formed its own human resources department, said a Reuters report.
Romasko, a former head of operations for Tesoro Corp. who also held logistics, supply and trading positions at ConocoPhillips, is leading a new project to combine Motiva's pair of Louisiana refineries into one complex, the report said.
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