Full-Time
Charterer
Posted on 8/25/2025
Trafigura
1,001-5,000 employees
Global commodities trading, storage, and transport
No salary listed
Houston, TX, USA
In Person
 Operations & Logistics (3) |
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- Bachelor degree or foreign equivalent in Economics or Finance or a related field
- Five (5) years of experience in oil tanker chartering and freight trading across VLCC, Suezmax, Aframax, Panamax, DPP MR and DPP handysize vessels gained in a global trading house
- Experience sourcing cargos and negotiating freight rates for time chartered and owned tankers
- Negotiating and executing time charters on short, medium and long-term bases and tankers taking on time charter independently traded with risk sitting solely with the charterer
- Negotiating, structuring, and reviewing legal terms of charter parties (including voyage both for charter in and charter out, bareboat and time charters) and COAs
- Negotiating and structuring COAs to mitigate risk, leveraging them as hedging tools for physical shipping deals
- Developing and managing relationships with third parties in the Asia-Pacific, Europe, and West Africa regions, including coordinating vessel fixings to and from these regions and collaborating with counterparties based in these markets
- At least six (6) months of the required five (5) years must include experience in oil cargo scheduling, terminal coordination, demurrage and deviation calculations, and managing load, discharge, sailing orders, in-port vessel operations, and post-fixture operations
- Demonstrable knowledge of IMOS and Trade finance
- International travel required 30% of the time
- Trading and chartering freight to internal and external customers
- Independently sourcing cargos and negotiating freight rates for time chartered and owned tankers
- Negotiating and executing time charters on short, medium and long-term bases and tankers taking on time charter independently traded with risk sitting solely with the charterer
- Negotiating, structuring, and reviewing legal terms of charter parties (including voyage both for charter in and charter out, bareboat and time charters) and COAs
- Negotiating and structuring COAs to mitigate risk, leveraging them as hedging tools for physical shipping deals (including COA re-letting, time charters, and owned vessels) and to help internal traders manage freight risk and exposure through agreements with shipowners
- Developing and managing relationships with third parties in the Asia-Pacific, Europe, and West Africa regions, including coordinating vessel fixings to and from these regions and collaborating with counterparties based in these markets
- International travel required 30% of the time
- Analyzing daily oil and tanker markets, preparing forecasts, and developing short, medium and long-term strategies for profitable freight trading by taking speculative positions and originating profitable shipping deals
- Negotiating COAs, time, and voyage charter parties
- Providing oil traders with accurate market insights and forecast for future markets supporting internal logistics for crude and oil product transportation
- Executing daily chartering activities, ensuring coordination with cargo and vessel operations for safety and operational optimization
- Negotiating with owners and brokers to optimize transportation costs for own cargoes, and collaborating with owners and charterers to expedite vessel clearances in accordance with company compliance policies
- Liaising with finance, operations, bunkering, credit, and legal teams, providing accurate and timely data and instructions throughout the trade cycle
- Monitoring voyage reconciliations to identify loss/gain discrepancies and recommending risk hedging strategies for TC-in vessels
- Contributing insights on the physical market to inform the global paper hedging and trading strategy for the freight book
- Reporting into the Global Head of Shipping
Trafigura is a global commodities trading firm that connects producers and buyers of minerals, metals, and energy. It buys in large quantities, stores, transports, and sells through its logistics network to industrial clients and utilities, including LNG supply for energy providers. It differentiates itself with its extensive global logistics capabilities, large-scale trading operations, and active role in the energy transition by supplying metals and minerals essential for renewable energy technologies and electric vehicles. Its goal is to efficiently link resource-producing regions with consuming markets worldwide, supporting reliable energy and material supply while helping shift toward a low-carbon economy.
Company Size
1,001-5,000
Company Stage
Debt Financing
Total Funding
$19.9B
Headquarters
Singapore, Singapore
Founded
1993
Simplify's Take
What believers are saying
- Nth Cycle $1.1B deal quadruples critical minerals refining capacity.
- Daphne Technology investment enables methane abatement compliance.
- Venezuela Minerven partnership accesses 9.5-ton gold production growth.
What critics are saying
- Six One overtakes Trafigura's 3.5B cf/d US gas volume in 2025.
- US sanctions reimpose on Minerven gold, seizing $50-100M assets by 2027.
- Vitol and Glencore squeeze Trafigura's third-place trading volumes.
What makes Trafigura unique
- Trafigura owns stakes in pipelines, mines, smelters, ports, and storage terminals.
- Impala Terminals operates 45 assets across 29 countries for logistics.
- Employee-owned structure with 1,400 owners drives aligned incentives.
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Benefits
Health Insurance
Paid Vacation
Professional Development Budget
Company News
World's Top oil trader hit by massive loss on bets gone wrong. * Vitol Group reportedly lost hundreds of millions as its derivatives bets were wrong-footed by the Middle East war and supply disruptions at the Strait of Hormuz. * The firm bet on weaker Dubai crude and stronger diesel versus jet fuel, but the conflict instead sent Dubai crude and jet fuel prices sharply higher. * Severe supply disruptions - cutting ~10 million bpd - have driven extreme volatility, with jet fuel markets under the most stress and shortages looming in Europe and Asia. The legendary derivatives trading team at Vitol Group, the world's largest oil trader, has reportedly lost hundreds of millions of U.S. dollars on oil bets that went very wrong as the war in the Middle East roiled global markets and trapped physical supply at the Strait of Hormuz. Vitol's star trader Yaoyao Liu found himself on the wrong side of bets on crude and fuel prices at the start of the U.S.-Israel war with Iran, as prices soared in the worst disruption of global oil supply in history, the Wall Street Journal reports, quoting sources with knowledge of the matter. Liu's trades are reportedly a closely-guarded secret not only on the market but also within Vitol itself. The oil trading giant's derivatives trading team won a lot of money earlier this decade, especially with the previous period of soaring oil prices in 2022, when the Russian invasion of Ukraine sent oil prices above $100 per barrel. Turnover and crude trades at the privately-held trading firm have held high ever since 2022, and prospects for additional profits looked even brighter at the beginning of this year. Following the U.S. seizure of Venezuela's oil, Vitol and another major trader, Trafigura, were picked by the White House to provide logistical and marketing services to facilitate the sale of Venezuelan oil. About that time, the tensions between the U.S. and Iran started to simmer again, and U.S. President Donald Trump began sending more aircraft carriers and troops to the region. Related: Trump Signals High Gas Prices Through November Midterms But even Vitol's star trader was wrong-footed. Sources and other traders who spoke to the Journal suspect that the oil bets were that diesel prices would trade at a premium to jet fuel and that the price of Dubai crude would slump compared to Brent Crude prices. These could have been winning bets if the war had been avoided. Instead, the U.S.-Israeli strikes on Iran and the subsequent de facto closure of the Strait of Hormuz sent jet fuel and Dubai crude prices soaring to astronomical highs. And Vitol's oil bets went awfully wrong, with losses estimated in the hundreds of millions of U.S. dollars, according to the Journal's sources. Last month, Dubai crude prices soared to an all-time high of $169.75 per barrel. So violent were the market whiplashes in recent weeks that Asian refiners have started pricing their orders for U.S. crude oil against the ICE Brent benchmark instead of the typical pricing on Dubai crude. The other oil market bet that reportedly wrong-footed Vitol's trading team was that diesel prices would rise against jet fuel prices. The war that cut off about 10 million barrels per day of crude oil supply from the Middle East reduced supply to Asian refiners, who had to curb output. Some Asian countries banned fuel exports to preserve domestic supply. Of all crude and product markets, nowhere has the stress been more severe than in jet fuel cracks and prices. The specifics of producing and storing jet fuel compared to other fuels made the kerosene market the most vulnerable to the major shifts in physical supply seen over the past weeks, analysts say. Jet fuel has very specialized tank storage requirements, and there isn't much of it stored globally, unlike many other products such as diesel and gasoline. Airlines in Asia are already grounding flights, while European carriers start to fret about a true jet fuel scarcity going into May and beyond. "We don't expect any disruption until early May, but if the war continues, we do run the risk of supply disruptions in Europe in May and June, and we hope the war will finish sooner than that and the risk to supply will be eliminated," Ryanair CEO Michael O'Leary told Sky News earlier this month. The jet fuel situation will worsen in the coming weeks, with shortages in Europe arriving within weeks. Even if the Strait of Hormuz were to re-open unconditionally to all traffic today, it would take months for oil and fuel markets to return to some semblance of normality. By Charles Kennedy for Oilprice.com More Top Reads From Oilprice.com Download the free Oilprice app today.
Heath Goldfields secures $65 million financing from Trafigura Funding supports Bogoso-Prestea mine after production resumed Deal includes offtake for 700,000 ounces amid ownership dispute Ghanaian mining company Heath Goldfields said on Thursday it had secured $65 million in financing from commodity trader Trafigura to support operations at the Bogoso-Prestea gold...
Trafigura has refinanced its Japanese term loan facility totalling JPY 104.7 billion (approximately $661 million). The loan consists of a five-year tranche only for the first time and represents Trafigura's eighth Samurai loan since entering the Japanese market in 2012.
Nth Cycle, a US startup developing electrochemical systems to refine critical minerals, has secured a $1.1 billion agreement with commodity trader Trafigura. The deal will quadruple the company's processing capacity from 3,100 metric tons of scrap annually at its Ohio facility. Founded by CEO Megan O'Connor, Nth Cycle refines nickel, cobalt, copper and rare earths using modular electric systems that are five to ten times smaller than traditional refineries. The company claims this reduces capital expenditure and enables profitable operations at just 6,000 metric tons per year, addressing the current shortage of battery waste materials. The startup is building facilities in South Carolina and the Netherlands with combined capacity of 18,000 metric tons. The agreement responds to growing concerns over China's control of over half the world's nickel refining capacity.
Trafigura partners with Venezuela's Minerven to launch responsible gold sourcing program. Trafigura-Minerven Gold Deal: Venezuela Moves Toward Responsible Mining and US Market Access Commodity trading giant Trafigura will collaborate with Venezuela's state-owned mining company, Minerven, to develop a responsible gold sourcing programme as part of a pre-payment agreement for gold doré, a semi-refined gold alloy. The initiative forms part of broader reforms in Venezuela's mining sector under acting President Delcy Rodríguez. These reforms follow recent policy shifts supported by the United States, aimed at attracting foreign investment and formalizing key industries, including oil and mining. Earlier this month, the United States issued a licence permitting transactions involving gold produced by Minerven, its subsidiaries, and the Venezuelan government. The authorization allows the export of gold to the US for refining, marking a significant easing of previous sanctions. Trafigura confirmed it will purchase and market only gold doré produced by Minerven's own operations. The company stated that all deliveries will comply with applicable labour laws and regulatory standards, although it declined to provide further details. Restricting sourcing to Minerven is expected to reduce the risk of supply chain contamination from third-party producers, particularly those linked to illegal mining activities in the Orinoco Mining Arc. A 2020 United Nations investigation found that parts of this region were controlled by criminal groups exploiting workers. Venezuela's communications ministry, mining ministry, and Minerven did not respond to requests for comment. According to a source familiar with the agreement, the responsible sourcing programme aims to raise operational standards in Venezuela's formal mining sector, with the long-term goal of gaining acceptance in international markets. However, the process is expected to take time. Under the deal, Minerven is expected to supply between 650 kilograms and 1 metric ton of gold doré to Trafigura for delivery to US markets. Venezuela's gold production rose by 37% in 2025 to 9.5 metric tons, based on official data. Historically, much of the country's gold exports have been routed to markets in the Middle East and Africa, according to industry sources and non-governmental organizations. Separately, Venezuela's central bank held approximately 47 tons of gold in reserves at the end of 2025. 59 total views, 2 views today