Meet the unseen hand that moves the world’s oil – VITOL

The Vitol Group is a privately held Swiss-based Dutch-owned multinational in energy and commodity trading company with a stunning US$ 303 Billion (2012) in revenue. And has 350 unknown very lucky share holders. The Group ships more then 8 million barrels of oil per day, more than 400 million tonnes of crude oil per year. Which is 6% percent of total world oil consumption. Basically the complete oil supply for countries like Germany, Great Britain and Italy combined! (decorrespondent). WATCH their corporate video here. Fortune calculated that when Vitol would be a public company, it would have been the 7th largest company in the world. Leaving companies like Toyota, Apple, Samsung and General Motors behind. Interesting side note is that it means that the Royal Kingdom of the Netherlands has two of the largest companies by revenue in the Top 10. Royal Dutch Shell (Shell Scenarios) is currently number 1 (Fortune500), with a US$ 481 Billion in revenue in 2013. Not bad for a country with only 17 million inhabitants. Looks like their colonial V.O.C. (map) (timeline) commonwealth trade network came handy after all. And before I forget, Vitol is also a company that has no problem publicly announcing it does business with Iran till the bitter end (WSJ) or secretly supplying war criminals Slobodan Milošević’s (Guardian) government with oil or even organising the very first sale of Libyan rebel oil to Tesoro Corporation (reuters). Another company you probably never heard of… Namely Black Rock, the world’s biggest investor firm. Watch Das Erste’s BLACK ROCK (ImageFilm) (Economist) documentary: Die Story im Ersten: Geld regiert die Welt…here But don’t worry everyone!…All of the mentioned companies are "Too big to fail" Right….? (Photo credit by WSJ)