What Makes $1 Billion a Year and Oils the Global Economy While Rebuilding Its Reputation?

It’s a quiet scene, but there’s more to it than meets the eye. The Estia, a 751-foot-long oil tanker, is loading gasoline on a breezy afternoon at port in Vadinar, a town in northwest India. The Bahamas-flagged ship has journeyed from Singapore to this hulking dock on the Arabian Sea, where a relentless afternoon sun bakes the concrete jetty. Through pipes connected to loading arms reaching some 66 feet high, the Estia is taking on 55,000 tons of gasoline from one of Asia’s largest and most modern oil refineries.

The 40-hour-long loading operation is just one of the hundreds of daily tanker movements that underpin the multibillion-dollar global petroleum market. Yet this one isn’t being undertaken by any of the household names that dominate the oil industry of the popular imagination—Exxon Mobil, say, or Chevron or Royal Dutch Shell. The jetty, the ship, and the giant refinery they serve are all controlled by a little-known private partnership that trades in oil, coal, iron ore, and metals: Trafigura Group Pte.