The world’s leader in producing and trading oil, Saudi Aramco has invested $5 million into blockchain platform VAKT. Moreover, Aramco Trading Company will become the user of the platform. This deal supports the general tendency of implementing blockchain technologies into the oil & gas industry.
VAKT will implement the received financing for further platform development and expansion of the Asian market. Implementation of the platform will digitalize all traditionally manual processes connected with documentation processing and data verification. For the largest company in the market, this will be a real breakthrough that will greatly lower their expenses and add speed and security to document processing.
Oil selling is a highly complicated process, that includes not only the commodity transfer but also an important back-office process. According to their press release, VAKT platform is focused on the full-cycle management of all document processing, from the entry to final settlement, improving data reconciliation and other processes connected with paper-based documentation. The approximate amount of costs saved with the implementation of digitalized documentation rises up to 40%.
Saudi Aramco is an experienced investor that has already supported a series of successful industry innovations and is currently seeking new perspective solutions that will help the company strengthen their positions and expand their impact to the new markets. According to Richard James, CFO of VAKT, the company has not been actively seeking for new investors, but it was impossible to lose a chance of attracting a partner of such a significance into their project.
VAKT platform is using blockchain technologies to digitalize the post-trade oil documentations, and they are already functioning in North Sea crude oil trades, being responsible for over 90% of all document processing. The platform is underpinned by JP Morgan’s version of the Ethereum-based open-source blockchain system - Quorum.
With the investment coming from the oil industry giant’s subsidiary, Saudi Aramco Energy Ventures, VAKT currently has 13 stakeholders, such as Shell, BP, Chevron, Total, Reliance Industries, Equinor, Gunvor, Mercuria, Koch Industries, Societe Generale, and other industry leaders.