APPEC-Gunvor expanding Asia operations and into power, according to chairman

Gunvor Group, a global energy trader, is expanding its Asia operations in order to expand into existing markets, such as liquefied petrol gas (LPG), gasoline, naphtha and aromatics, as well as new areas, including power.

Power is one of the areas that Torbjorn Tornqvist - who is also a founder - said had potential in Asia. He was speaking on the sidelines the Asia Pacific Petroleum Conference Conference (APPEC), which took place on Monday.

Gunvor, a Geneva-based company, has its main Asian trading hub in Singapore. It employs 160 people there and will concentrate on regional ambitions both for conventional and renewable energy.

Tornqvist stated that the integration would be both.

Gunvor, an oil refinery, terminal and two biofuel plants owned by the company in Spain, is open to investing in refining if it's the right time, said he.

Gunvor's website states that the majority of its revenues come from Europe and North America. Gunvor's net profit for 2023 was $1.25 billion, down from $2.36 billion the year before.

He said that the industry's margins were shrinking.

He said, "We do not expect to see these numbers in the future. We are back at normalisation."

Tornqvist said that India was the shining star in Asia when it comes to oil demand, even though its consumption is only one-third of China's, which is growing very slowly.

He said in a panel earlier on Monday that "in the rest of Asia it's a mixed picture".

He said that the liquefied gas (LNG), market is more healthy than oil because of lower prices, which spur demand in South Asia.

The LNG story is more positive than most people expected in terms of demand growth in Asia. "We start to see LNG prices between $10-13 per million British Thermal Units (mmBtu), and you can see that price-sensitive countries such as Pakistan, Bangladesh, India, are much more interested in the product."

Tornqvist doesn't expect a price collapse from the new LNG projects that will come online in the U.S.A. and Qatar after 2025, because countries that are building gas-fired electricity plants will keep the demand up.

"Growing demand for electricity will naturally lead to gas-fired plants...And we think that gas demand is going to grow quite strongly in Asia." Reporting by Florence Tan and Emily Chow, Editing by Tony Munroe & Jacqueline Wong

(source: Reuters)