Comparison with Geneva and other oil centres

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Geneva: the office without the tanks

The Geneva volume describes how independent oil traders established themselves in Switzerland from the 1960s and 1970s. Vitol, founded in Rotterdam in 1966, opened its first Swiss office, in Zug, in 1968 and its Singapore office in 1979.¹ The two cities became complementary hubs of the same firms. In the Geneva volume’s sketch of a trader’s day, the Geneva trader speaks at eight in the morning with colleagues in Singapore, who hand over the trades concluded during their day.² The Geneva volume also records that Trafigura has its headquarters in Singapore although much of its activity takes place in Geneva.³

The difference lies in the physical base. Geneva has no port, no export refinery and no tank farm of international importance. Its contribution to the oil trade consists of the decisions, contracts, financing and documentation of cargoes that move elsewhere. Singapore adds to these functions the refineries, storage and blending capacity examined in this chapter, together with the location at which Asian prices are assessed. A Geneva trader who wants to observe the formation of the price of jet fuel in Asia must look to Singapore. A Singapore trader can see the price formed at the jetties a few kilometres from the office.

The regulatory approaches differ as well. Switzerland has long debated the oversight of commodity trading, from the federal government’s background report of 2013⁴ to the controversies over corruption, sanctions and transparency that the Geneva volume describes. Singapore has concentrated its regulation on the financial side of the business, through MAS and the Securities and Futures Act, while its incentives for traders, examined in Chapter I of this part, reward the presence of trading staff and activity in the city. Both centres face the same challenges in sanctions compliance and anti-money laundering, which Part H of this book examines.

Rotterdam, Houston and Dubai

Ong Eng Tong ranked Singapore as the third largest refining centre in the world after Houston and Rotterdam. The comparison with Rotterdam is particularly close. Both are port cities whose refineries, tanks and blending capacity supply a hinterland much larger than their own country, and both are the delivery point for a regional system of price assessments. Rotterdam serves as the reference for northwest Europe, as Singapore does for Asia. Houston, by contrast, sits within the largest producing and consuming country in the world and derives its role from the American domestic market.

Dubai and Abu Dhabi are the newest competitors. They combine proximity to Gulf production with exchanges that list crude futures, low taxes and an active policy of attracting trading houses, a competition that Chapter III of Part K examines in detail. The Hormuz crisis of 2026 showed the vulnerability of a hub located inside the Gulf to the closure of its only sea route. Singapore, located on the consuming side of the trade at the entrance to the South China Sea, offered a different and in some respects safer location, although it depends on the same Gulf supply.

Notes

1. Vitol, “About” (vitol.com, accessed November 2026), as cited above in the subsection on storage. ↩
2. Ressos, Genève, place financière internationale, partie G, chapitre III, section « Une journée de négociant » : « À huit heures, il échange avec ses collègues de Singapour, qui lui transmettent les opérations conclues dans leur journée. » ↩
3. Ressos, Genève, place financière internationale, partie G, chapitre V : « Trafigura a son siège à Singapour et une grande partie de ses activités à Genève. » ↩
4. Ressos, Genève, place financière internationale, partie G, chapitre I, section « La politique fédérale à l’égard du négoce : trois rapports » : « Le Conseil fédéral a publié le 27 mars 2013 un rapport de base sur le négoce des matières premières », with a verified footnote to the State Secretariat for International Finance, “Négoce des matières premières”, sif.admin.ch. ↩

For general information only. This article does not constitute legal or tax advice, does not replace advice on an individual case and creates no lawyer-client relationship. It reflects the legal position as of October 2026.