Energy Behemoths Reliance, Chevron and Total Join Blockchain Platform Vakt

By Swati Kishore

London-based Blockchain platform Vakt has announced its collaboration with Indian petroleum firm Reliance Industries, American multinational energy giant Chevron, and France-based petroleum refining company Total.

Notably, Vakt is one of the first commodities trading Blockchain pilot projects to go live, and since the end of 2018, many trading firms are already active on the platform.

Vakt was developed in 2017 and it facilitates the finalization of crude oil deals. The platform is a collective effort and was built by Vakt Global, an association set up by oil giants Royal Dutch Shell and BP.

Other companies which contributed to the development of the post-trade process maintenance Blockchain platform include Norway’s Equinor, Guvnor and energy trading firms Koch Supply and Trading, Mercuria Energy Group.

The shareholders of Vakt were the first ones to begin using the platform in November 2018 for North Sea crude oil trading.

Other shareholders of the platform include banks ING, ABN Amro, and Societe Generale.

Blockchain is the radical technology that underpins the world’s pioneering cryptocurrency Bitcoin. The distributed ledger tech, however, goes beyond digital currencies to offer an efficient solution for the inefficiencies faced in trading and settlement. The Vakt platform leverages this very technology to digitise and ‘centralize’ the massive paperwork that was previously shared between the entities involved in a deal.

Thomas Waymel, the Head of Trading and Shipping at Total has said in a statement that their company has been actively looking to digitize the post-trade processes and that joining Vakt was a step in the right direction,

“Total has been supporting industry initiatives to digitize cargo post-trade processes for some time. We view them as a major step forward towards safer, faster and cheaper logistical operations. We are committed to contributing to the roll out to various markets of the VAKT blockchain platform.”

The joining of Vakt by these three oil giants indicates further adoption of Blockchain by large scale enterprises to streamline their processes. Only today, in another news, we had announced the collaboration of IBM, Ford, Huayou Cobalt, and LF Chem for Blockchain pilot to trace the sourcing of cobalt in Congo. 2019 is turning out to be another fruitful year for the adoption of Blockchain Technology.