With a family history in the oil, gas, and refining business going back over 40 years, and when you’ve spent the last decade designing systems to protect oil & gas fields and refineries, you make great connections in the industry. Fuel buyers and sellers face unique challenges, and there are huge financial consequences. These buyers and sellers often feel like they spend more time performing due diligence than they do on the fuel transaction itself. We’ve seen these issues first-hand, and can assist buyers and sellers with not only starting a transaction, but completing a transaction cleanly.
Fuel buyers face enormous difficulties trying to cleanly execute a fuel purchase. With the money involved in these purchases, fraud is a very real possibility. Fake documents, fake refineries, and fake title holders offer nothing but disappointment (or worse). Claims of fuel turn out to be empty tanks or tanks filled with water. Even if the fuel is there, only one tank may have the real fuel, while the remainder of the order is “vapor”. An honest fuel supplier may deliver all the proper fuel, but it might not meet specification due to evaporation or other issues. Sellers sometimes oversell the fuel, and while the buyer issues their commercial invoice in good faith, the fully executed commercial invoice never arrives; or worse the fully executed commercial invoice is returned, but the fuel isn’t delivered on-time.
Tank availability is another issue facing fuel purchasers. A buyer may find a real refinery with real fuel, only to find there are no tanks available to put the fuel in. A title holder may not have paid their tank fees, and while fuel is there and meets specification, the tank farm won’t release the fuel until the tank fees are paid. The buyer paid for the fuel, but now faces tank fees that the title holder should have paid, before the fuel can be released.
Sellers face many issues as well. A buyer may claim they can complete a transaction, but they can’t provide a tank service agreement. With no way to obtain tanks, how can they expect to complete a fuel purchase? Maybe they hope to inject the fuel directly into an end-buyer’s tanks… Many “buyers” don’t have the funds to complete the purchase, looking for proof of product and test documents from the seller to convince their end-buyer to pay for fuel they don’t yet own. The seller delivers the fuel to their storage tanks, but delays from the “buyer’s” end-buyer cause the fuel to sit in those tanks for several days, where evaporation or separation occurs, causing the fuel to fall out of specification. The “buyer”, finding that his end-buyer is delayed or isn’t going to buy the fuel, disappears, and the seller must try to sell the fuel quickly on the spot market, and the search for a valid buyer begins again... Many buyers depend on end-buyers to complete transactions, and any change or delay from an end-buyer causes transactions to fail.
Valid buyers must take extensive measures to protect themselves, and valid sellers must also take protective measures. While it seems there are too many protective barriers in place to ever complete a transaction, with the knowledge and experience in fuel transactions at cautiosystems, successful fuel transactions can be assured.
cautiosystems has partnerships offering world-wide 24/7 coverage of the oil/fuel market. These partnerships operate offices in Dubai, London, California, and with a mandate in Houston. Crude of various grades, fuels, LNG/LPG and other commodities are bought and sold, and logistics services provided; all with the financing vehicles to ensure successful transactions.
If you are trying to purchase fuel, and want professionals with direct relationships at several refineries, please contact us with your fuel needs. If you are a refinery or title holder with fuel availability, and desire access to proven buyers worldwide, please contact us with details about the fuels you have available.
NOTE: WE HAVE NO MANDATES AND NO BROKERS - Anyone representing themselves as a mandate or broker for cautiosystems is not authorized to do so. Please contact cautiosystems to report any unauthorized mandates or brokers, or any offers presented by them. Also note that no entity other than CautioSystems Inc. can use our Tank Storage Agreements (TSAs). Any person or entity claiming they are using our TSAs as part of a Joint Venture Agreement is commiting fraud, and should be reported to us as soon as possible. You should not engage in any such transaction.