Taleveras, the Nigerian based international oil trading company, Tuesday night said its involvement in third party oil trading contracts are legitimate trades that are guided by international standards common with such contracts around the world.
In a statement signed by Alex School, its legal counsel, the company said it was making a once-and-for-all clarification in relation to some online publications regarding a case involving Atlantic Drilling Fluids in the United States, and said the case was neither against Taleveras nor against its founder, Igho Sanomi.
Explaining how Taleveras works, legal counsel, School, said the company since 2000, has had one of its core activities involving the sourcing, trading and third party contracts engagements. These contracts cover oil and gas upstream operations, he said.
“Taleveras due to its capacity, trading expertise, and financial strength, continues to source and engage in procuring third party oil contracts. Taleveras performs on these contracts, handling the physical delivery, risk management, and logistics from start point to its numerous first class end users and major refiners,” School explained.
The company further said that this involves a rigorous process of verifying the contracts with the issuing authorities to authenticate them, with further compliance involving its own lending banks’ internal due diligence processes.
“This is no different from international trading standards performed by the numerous international and major oil and gas companies operating in Nigeria,” the company further explained.
On the specific US department case involving Atlantic Drilling Fluids, Taleveras stated that it and two other major oil trading houses, Glencore and Arcadia, were not faulted for embarking on a legitimate transaction, “as all payments were made based on legitimate third party contracts with private companies and not NNPC,” it emphasized.
Explaining further, Taleveras stated that the ultimate aim of contracting is to off-take crude oil from asset productions, adding that neither it nor its associated companies lifted any oil from this production. “Terms of the agreement were breached and hence a legal dispute and appropriate filings made in respected court of jurisdiction,” it said with respect to the US case, which it said is not about it or its founder.
