Brightoil's Trading Chiefs Depart, ex-Sinochem Trader Joins

Two senior trading heads have left Brightoil Petroleum Holdings Ltd, and the company has hired a former executive from China's state-run Sinochem, marking a reshuffle at its Asia trading operations, senior trading sources said.

Brightoil's Singapore head of crude oil and head of fuels have left the firm, the sources said, while it has hired Wang Wei, former head of trading of Sinochem's Singapore operations, to be chief executive of Singapore oil trading, a new position.

Hongkong-listed Brightoil, which started as an independent bunker fuel supplier in south China, has turned over personnel in recent years at it has aggressively expanded its trading portfolio.

The firm is moving to transform itself into an upstream-focused company, operating onshore oil and gas fields in northwestern Chinese region of Xinjiang and acquiring oilfield stakes offshore China.

Brightoil last week said it would bid for Newfield Global, a unit of U.S. firm Newfield Exploration (NFX) that operates two oil and gas blocks offshore China, just months after it bought oilfield stakes from Anadarko Petroleum Corp.

Du Songhao, head of Brightoil's Singapore-based crude oil trading, and Zhang Xincheng, head of products and petrochemicals, have left the company, traders who know them told Reuters.

It was not clear why they left the firm. The recent sudden and deep falls in crude prices , which have lost more than 20 percent since June, have caught some trading houses off guard.

Du and Zhang both joined Brightoil in late 2012 from China's Unipec, the trading vehicle of top Asian refiner Sinopec Corp . When contacted by Reuters, both declined to comment.

Du confirmed the hiring of Wang. A Brightoil spokeswoman declined to comment.

Brightoil, led by chairman Raymond Sit, known in the Chinese trading community for his networking skills with Chinese bureaucrats, expanded two years ago to trade crude oil, gas oil and petrochemicals, beyond its main business marine bunker fuel.

The firm's previous big-brush hire was a near full team of fuel oil traders from oil major BP in 2010. The whole team left the company about two years later.

By Chen Aizhu and Florence Tan