One trader bought 250,000 barrels of oil and secured a rare payout at a time when oil prices turned negative, causing jitters in markets and leaving most other traders scrambling to find storage options across both sides of the Atlantic, Bloomberg reported on Wednesday.
But for BB Energy, a London-based trading house,the historic oil market crash was golden opportunity owed to its competitive advantage of having storage capacity over other firms, a source who was not authorized to speak on the topic, told Bloomberg.
BB Energy bought around 10% of all barrels of WTI crude futures for delivery in May.
US oil prices hit an all-time low of -$37.63 on April 20 due to an extreme shortage in storage options for oil, meaning most traders apart from BB Energy had to effectively pay traders to take the oil off their hands.
It remains unknown whether BB Energy is still holding on to the barrels it bought and how much the trading-house paid (or indeed was paid) for them as well as how much it made.
