Glencore’s traders score big profits as war rattles energy markets

Glencore’s oil and gas team made bumper profits as the Iran war roiled global energy markets, with the surge in prices helping to put the firm on course for one of its best-ever trading results.

Based on its first-quarter performance, full-year core earnings from the company’s trading unit would “comfortably” exceed the top end of its long-term guidance, which is set at $3.5 billion, Glencore said in a trading update on Thursday. The unit made $2.9 billion last year.

Commodity-trading houses are reaping bonanza profits as the war creates huge dislocations across energy markets, with immediately-available cargoes of oil and fuel products trading at huge premiums after the near-closure of the Strait of Hormuz triggered a global race to secure physical oil.

Industry leader Vitol Group told banks it made about $2 billion in the first quarter, Bloomberg reported earlier this month, while Trafigura Group, the second-largest oil trader and leading metals trader, enjoyed two of its best-ever quarters in the six months through March.

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