SINGAPORE: The trading arm of Azerbaijan's state oil company SOCAR has hired industry veteran Anthony Poon as the head of its Singapore office after the departure of the unit's managing director Victor Lim for personal reasons, the company said on Monday.
The management change comes as SOCAR Trading Singapore looks to grow its core crude oil trading business and expand its products trading activities.
"Victor resigned and has left the company.
The reason for his departure was for his own personal reasons.
Anthony Poon is replacing him," a company spokesman said in response to queries from Reuters.
Poon began in his new role on Monday, which comes six months after two senior traders left the Singapore office.
SOCAR Trading Singapore currently employs 12 people, and it plans to add another eight staff by the end of the year, the spokesman said.
"We are hiring new crude, fuel oil, gas oil and naphtha traders, as well as operations staff," he said.
Poon had worked for Caltex in Singapore for around 30 years, last holding the position of head of the international crude trading department, where he was responsible for crude and derivatives trading.
Most recently, Poon was general manager of supply trading and risk management at New York-listed InterOil Corp. the spokesman said.
"SOCAR's been talking about beefing up their presence in the region for some time now, but we haven't seen a lot of activity so far.
Maybe that will change now with a new team in place," said a Singapore-based oil trader.
Geneva-based SOCAR Trading aims to triple oil and products volumes sales in the next five years and may buy downstream assets to join the league of top global players with operations on most continents, Valery Golovushkin, SOCAR president and chief executive told Reuters in an interview in February.
The Singapore office was set up in 2009 with the goal of selling greater volumes of Azeri light crude sourced from its parent company to Asian customers.
It wants to increase the volume of Azeri light sales in Asia from 5-6 million barrels a month currently to 7-9 million barrels in 2011, Arzu Azimov, SOCAR Trading's vice-president of trading and operations, said in an interview with Reuters in December.
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